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

I was asked by east coast fishers to relay concerns to the Minister about the threat they see to their industry. It is currently a sustainable shellfish industry which they estimate directly and indirectly results in the employment of approximately 800 people affecting towns and coastal communities and fishers all the way up and down the east coast.

The threat they see is from plans to build industrial wind farms on sensitive sand banks. Sand banks particularly close to me are the Kish Bank and the Codling Bank. Fishers and myself would very much advocate in favour of developing renewable energy resources and using the marine potential we have to develop those resources and nobody disputes this. However, we do not think one thing should come at the expense of another.

In fact the point the fishers on the east coast make is that European law - I am not a legal expert in this area - is very clear that we cannot displace one industry with another. Where there is an industry and where people are making their livelihood and living in a particular area it is prohibited to displace them and destroy their industry and livelihood in order to make way for another industry. That is precisely what they see as coming down the line as the private corporations - they are all private corporations, most of them not even companies based in this country - are planning to put very big industrial wind farms all the way up and down the east coast on sensitive sand banks which are critical to the sustainability of the shellfish industry and fish spawning grounds. They are very sensitive sites at many levels. The Minister's concern, and the fisher's concern, is in terms of the fishing but the sites are also very sensitive environmentally. The fishers say that the private companies that are being issued licenses, for example at the moment for surveys, are ultimately intending to put big industrial wind farms which will potentially see thousands of enormous wind turbines at very close proximity to our coasts and critically, from the fishers' point of view, on sand banks.

The sand banks are critical to the fishers' industry and this will destroy their industry. They are in no doubt of that and that there will be nothing left of their industry at the end of it. These things should be placed further out or on less sensitive sites. If the wind farms go on these sand banks, like the Codling, Kish and others, they will destroy their fishing industry and their livelihoods.

There is supposed to be a requirement for serious consultation between developers in these areas and those who make a living - in this case the fishers - but this is not happening. In the case of the developers on the Codling Bank they will not even meet the legal representatives of the fishers. There is no serious engagement and developers are ploughing ahead regardless of the consequences for the fishers.

The question the fishers asked me to ask the Minister is what he is doing to safeguard their industry and their livelihoods. They are watching in and are very keen to hear the Minister's response but that is what they want to know. What is the Minister doing to ensure their industry and livelihoods are not destroyed by plans to put wind turbines on these particular locations which are critical to the sustainability of their industry, their incomes and their jobs ?

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