Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The entire exercise we are engaged in is to try to crystallise the benefits to Ireland. That is the entire approach behind what we are doing. As I have said publicly previously, I do not have any intention of settling for construction jobs and making the sandwiches. There must be a return to Ireland, and in terms of the smaller wind farms that have been built already there is a return in rates to the local authority. Leasehold arrangements have been entered into with the local landowners and so on but on top of that there has to be part of the renewable benefit that comes back to Ireland. I cannot agree with the depiction of it that we are doing all this for the foreigner. I have read that in some commentary and I have read a great deal of exaggeration about all of this. All of the developers that I have met speak with an Irish accent like Deputy Pringle's or mine. I do not know any of them. Some of them are well known to the Deputy. The notion that we are giving away all our natural resources to Johnny Foreigner went out with the sitcom in which Art Mitchell used to take part. What we are trying to do is industrialise a precious natural resource and create jobs in the process.

On Deputy Moynihan's question, Deputy Penrose's Bill has provided a valuable function in highlighting the issues about which we have had an exchange here.

My view - I think it is also the view of my colleague, the Minister of State at the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government, Deputy O'Sullivan - is that one can most flexibly deal with this by way of refinement and enforcement of the planning guidelines. There are some communities which believe they are enforced differently from one local authority to another and that there is a requirement for them to be enforced, and I agree with that.

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