John Kelly (Labour) | Oireachtas source

A number of weeks ago Senator John Whelan and I called for a moratorium on wind farm developments until the review of the current guidelines was completed. Needless to say, that call fell on deaf ears, but there have been a number of developments in the past couple of weeks as a result of a European Court of Justice ruling which found that Ireland was not compliant with an EU EIA directive. Where property is devalued, the State will be held liable. From a rough tot of the possible liability, we are talking about anything up to €1 billion for persons affected in living too close to wind farm developments. In the past few days we have been talking about how we can save €300 million. However, when the floodgates open on this issue, we will be talking about a sum of at least €1 billion, or perhaps more. Will the Deputy Leader bring this to the attention of the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government? It would be in everybody's interests if he could come to the House next week to debate this issue because we simply would not be able to afford this bill.