Louis O'Hara (Galway East, Sinn Fein)

Belleville in Monivea and Abbeyknockmoy. In Grange and Gregmore, the Ballymoneen solar project, also led by PCRE, is currently under construction. I am from the local area. The construction has caused enormous disruption locally between damage to roads, road closures, noise and consistent breaches of planning conditions. Local residents have been informed in recent days that the developer now intends to expand the development and it has a number of new sites identified locally.

People have serious concerns around safety, health and well-being, the impact on their homes, property values, the quality of life, the local landscape and environment, whether their children will be able to build there in the future, what the future of farming will look like in the area - this is prime agricultural land that has been taken up - where all of this end, whether the developers will keep expanding and whether vast swathes of the countryside will ultimately covered in these farms. There has been no clarity provided to people on these issues.

There was no public consultation initially in terms of the Ballymoneen development. The consultation for the Belleville development was seriously lacking. Most people were uninformed. The reality is that the concerns being expressed by local people are not being taken into account and the questions they have are not being answered. The core of this problem is the legislative vacuum the Government continues to tolerate. Due to the lack of clear mandatory national guidelines on solar development, the system is rigged in favour of developers. Our countryside is like the wild west at present. It is open season for these developers to come in, to land these proposals right on top of homes and to change local communities beyond recognition with no real input from the people who live in those communities. These people are being treated with contempt and it is completely unacceptable.

I am fully committed to climate action. I recognise the importance of meeting our renewable energy targets but climate action cannot be delivered by corporate land grabs that destroy rural social fabric and undermine our food security. I am calling on Government to end the unacceptable delay in bringing forward specific planning guidelines on solar energy developments. We need guidelines that will protect communities, ensure appropriate land use, ensure safety, and ensure proper set-back distances and real community consultation. If the Government is serious about a just transition, it will introduce these protections immediately. If the Government fails to act, it is endorsing the industrialisation of rural Ireland one community at a time. The people I represent and people right across rural Ireland deserve better than to be sacrificed for corporate profit.

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