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

The Deputy is right and I hear that developers are proceeding to take options on possible sites for development in different parts of the country. That has been ongoing for 15 years. If the export possibility develops, the process will be on a larger scale.

Deputy Colreavy knows enough about the history of this country to acknowledge I cannot do anything about farmers who want to sign up to options with developers to use their land to erect a mobile telephone mast or build a wind turbine. There was a long history in the country of the fight for peasant proprietorship and my fellow county man, Michael Davitt, led that battle, even if that is not where he started out it is where he ended up. They would know about that in Leitrim and I suspect Deputy Colreavy knows there is nothing I can do with the farmer who wants to sell a site to a developer if he thinks he is getting an attractive enough offer.

We must wait until we see the outcome of the ongoing process in the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government in respect of the planning guidelines. There was a substantial response to the points put out and the setbacks raised by the Deputy will be included in those guidelines but we are a bit away yet from the Minister making a decision.

See this speech in context