John Kelly (Labour)

The Minister of State is welcome. I support the motion but will make some brief comments on the issue of wind energy. We are all supportive of the notion of wind energy and I have always promoted the offshore wind energy option as it is twice as productive, although it might be twice as expensive. That said, I have a problem with the distance between wind farms and private residences. There is no protection for people who must live beside wind farms. If one asks people who are not forced to live beside wind farms what they think of them, they will say they are beautiful to see as they drive around the country. That may be true but not for those who have to live beside them.

The Wind Turbines (Minimum Distances from Residential Premises) Bill is currently before the House of Lords in the United Kingdom. It has passed Second Stage and Committee Stage will be taken soon. The Bill was mooted by Lord Reay who stated:

There are many reasons to be opposed to the Government's policy towards wind farms and I agree with most of them. But this Bill only concerns itself with one disadvantage of onshore wind turbines - their propensity for making life a misery for those unlucky enough to find themselves forced to live in their shadow.

There is now a well-established body of evidence, collected worldwide, that demonstrates the harmful effect of turbines for at least some of those who live close to them. Complaints are made continuously to the environmental health officers of local authorities.

In her book on wind turbine syndrome, Dr. Nina Pierpont recorded and analysed the symptoms of a number of families in different parts of the world who were driven out of their homes by their sufferings from wind farms. Dr. Pierpont concluded that a minimum setback distance of 2 km should be required and also that developers should be obliged to buy out affected families at the pre-turbine value of their homes, if that is feasible.

I do not necessarily agree that we should publish a Bill that proposes turbines should be located 2 km away from homes but it should be done based on their scale. The higher they are, the farther away they should be from homes. I have mentioned that to the Minister, Deputy Rabbitte, and I propose to initiate a Bill in this House along those lines which I hope will be supported because there is no protection for local people when it comes to wind turbines. They are lovely but when developers decide they want to put a wind farm in a particular area, the only protection for families is that they are supposed to involve the local community. However, they do not do that. The developer identifies the location, talks to the farmer and signs him or her up to a sweet deal in which he or she will get €20,000 or €30,000 a year for leasing the land, and once that deal is done, there is no going back on it. The developer then tells the local community what he or she proposes to do, at which time it is too late for the community to do anything about it. That is not protection for people given the health risks attached to these wind turbines. I hope the Minister of State will be supportive of the Bill when we bring it before the House.