Johnny Guirke (Meath West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

At the wind farm construction site in the Finn Valley in Ballybofey, County Donegal, there was a large-scale bog slide recently that, as Deputy Pringle mentioned, polluted a salmon and trout river and a fish farm. This happened because of the disturbance of lands during the wind farm's construction. In south Galway, the State has incurred fines of €10.5 million, and rising, because of a massive landslide during a wind farm's construction. The European Court of Justice found that Ireland had failed to assess properly the development's environmental effects on the locality.

In the Delvin, Raharney and Ballivor areas of my constituency of Meath West, Bord na Móna and Gaeltec Utilities are in the process of applying for planning permission to erect 35 wind turbines ranging in height from 180 m to 200 m, some of the tallest in Europe, with a setback distance from many homes of only four times the height of the turbine and little regard for noise, flicker, the value of people's homes or the environmental effects. Located beside one of the proposed wind farms is one of Ireland's leading bloodstock farms. We talk about climate change and climate action, but what happened in Donegal and Galway did more in terms of damaging the climate than those wind farms could ever do to help it.

If wind farms must be 600 ft to 650 ft tall to get the desired wind speeds, are these areas suitable for such developments? Will the Minister of State put a hold on wind farm planning applications until there has been a full investigation into what happened in Donegal and Galway so that we avoid another environmental disaster in our areas or elsewhere?

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