Richard O'Donoghue (Limerick County, Independent Ireland Party)

I thank the Tánaiste for his reply. We have had guidelines since 2006. The Tánaiste is right; it has taken 12 years where we are looking at guidelines. Every time there is a change of Government, it is guidelines, guidelines, guidelines. If there are guidelines put in place for wind turbines in this country, at least they can be put up straight away. You will not have High Court battles or objections because the guidelines will be there.

It is the same for biodigesters. It is the exact same thing. If guidelines are put in place, the people who want to build these for the betterment of the farming community, energy and everything else will know where they can build them and there will be no High Court battles about them. We will be able to build them and also meet the energy targets we need to meet. However, having 12 years to put in guidelines and during that time ignoring the health guidelines from the World Health Organization which actually tell you wind turbines are supposed to be done 1:10 will tell you there will be no wind turbines built in Ireland if that is adopted. At the moment we are building 1:4. For every 1 m you go up, they say it should be 4 m away, but the World Health Organization says it should be 1:10. That means we need to push offshore now and save the health of people in this country. Look at the health implications. Put them up where we can, get them up and then cover everything in the policies.

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