Joe Flaherty (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am delighted to see the Minister back in the Chamber. Everybody in the House is relieved to know that all is well for him in the family home.

I welcome the confirmation last week that a number of Longford-based projects have been approved for funding from the just transition fund. It was particularly good to see the inclusion of an ambitious technology energy cluster project for the site of the ESB power station in Lanesborough. The proposal has the potential to put the Shannonside town at the centre of alternative and green energy production, and it would certainly open up a new world in a very specialist area of research and energy development for the region. I need to point out, however, that recent events concerning the issuing of a tender by the ESB for the demolition of the power station in Lanesborough and the sister plant in Shannonbridge have the potential to put the project and other just transition projects in jeopardy. It is important for the Minister and his Department to realise that the decision to grant funding for the project while the ESB proceeds with plans for the demolition of the Longford site is truly farcical. It is further evidence of the ESB's determination to cut and run and abandon the region.

I am somewhat concerned that a joint application from Longford and Roscommon county councils for funding for a proposed economic plan for the Lanesborough-Ballyleague area was rejected.

The decision was disappointing in the extreme as this particular community is very much at the heart of the area affected by decarbonisation with a local power station and the Bord na Móna Mount Dillon works on its doorstep. Indeed, this entire community where I grew up was founded on Bord na Móna and the ESB. I truly believe the proposed study would have been, and will be, the basis for future plans in the area and, as such, one would have thought it would have been ideal for just transition funding. I appreciate the difficulty for the two local authorities was that an element of the planning for the strategy had already commenced. On that basis, it was deemed ineligible. Similarly, I am aware there is no appeals mechanism for any project promoters to appeal the decision. However, I appeal to the Minister to go back to the Department and the just transition team and ask it to review this particular application again because I believe the strategy that will emanate from this project will be critical to future plans for the area. Indeed, it would be somewhat ironic, if not comical, that the actual research and subsequent plan was not funded through the just transition fund.

To conclude on a personal level, having grown up in Lanesboro and owing an awful lot to Bord na Móna and the ESB community, I know full well how important this strategy and plan will be the future of the community. Again, I appeal to the Minister to have another look at it.

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