Michael McNamara (Clare, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Anyway, I will continue. At the time the Minister said the European landscape convention was adopted in 2000 as a new Council of Europe instrument with which to guide the management, planning and protection of all landscapes in Europe. Ireland, in common with 34 other countries, has signed and ratified this convention. The Minister said:

The aim of a national landscape strategy will be to put in place a framework to achieve balance between the active management, forward-planning and protection of our internationally renowned landscape as a physical, economic and cultural asset. A core objective of a national landscape strategy is for the sustainable management of change affecting landscape and not the preservation or freezing of the landscape at a particular point in its continuing evolution.

Balance is essential to the debate and it is particularly lacking in the contribution of some but not all Opposition Members. Change is inevitable as we move forward. With your permission, a Leas-Cheann Comhairle, I wish to read a short extract from the county development plan for County Clare:

County Clare possesses world-class renewable energy potential. It has some of the best wind speeds in western Europe, a long Atlantic coastline and a valuable estuary resource. It is also one of the most afforested counties in Ireland. These resources present excellent opportunities for investment in wind, wave, tidal, hydro and biomass energy. The county also has an excellent modern grid distribution network with two 400 kV power lines strategically traversing the county providing potential for new connections.

I am pleased to acknowledge that previous Governments built two power stations in County Clare, both of which were in their time the biggest power stations in the country. I am equally pleased to say that when those Governments built them they did not leave them in splendid isolation but they connected them to our population centres, hence the two 400 kV power lines. Change is inevitable. The change that will be wrought by pylons, power lines, wind farms, fracking and the potential for fish farms and increasing the aquaculture output of this country, and even by water abstraction plans for Dublin, pose a challenge but there is no reason the challenge cannot be met in balance with the landscape by the Government and future Governments. It was not impossible to harness the Shannon and transfer the energy across the country or to build a power station in Moneypoint and transfer the power that was generated. There is no reason we cannot move forward in that vein but the histrionics some Opposition Members have brought to the debate would suggest that we abandon all progress and development and effectively sterilise the country. That simply cannot happen. In the world in which we live progress and development are inevitable. I accept we need balance and the development must be beneficial to the health and economic well-being of the majority of citizens but that does not mean that development cannot happen in the manner outlined. I believe it can and therefore I cannot support the motion as presented by the Opposition.

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