Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Putting up these big wind turbines involves pouring masses of concrete for the bases. There are very real questions about whether there is a tangible net benefit in terms of CO2 reduction when the transport costs of bringing concrete up, building roads up to the top of these mountains to put up these wind farms, and so on are taken into account. That is opposed to growing trees, which does not have all those downside consequences in terms of climate mitigation but has all the upsides from every single point of view. Coillte is not delivering. It is an absolute scandal. The Minister is right to refer to this, but we should be fighting it. It is an absolute scandal that the State forestry company cannot engage in afforestation because of flipping EU state aid rules. It is a shocker. We should be screaming from the rooftops about how mad that is. This is against a background of Europe setting these targets and telling us to be serious about CO2 reduction, carbon sinks and so on while at the same time preventing our State forestry company from doing forestry, thereby forcing it into doing other things such as linking up with the private sector in the back-door privatisation of valuable State forest and land assets.

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