Lynn Boylan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Cuirim fáilte roimh an Aire Stáit. It is important to put some context around the Bill that we are being asked to support tonight. It is also important to look at Ireland's record on upholding environmental and nature laws. In January 2022, the EU official responsible for overseeing governance, enforcement action, and compliance on EU environmental legislation, told an Environment Ireland conference that much work remains to be done if Ireland is to bridge the gap of environmental compliance. He went on to describe circumstances in Ireland as disappointing and even worrying, and he called for a radical change of behaviour. This view was then echoed by the Citizens' Assembly on Biodiversity Loss in March 2023. It found that the State has comprehensively failed to adequately fund, implement, and enforce existing national legislation and EU biodiversity-related laws and directives. State bodies and agencies should be held accountable for their performance in the implementation and enforcement of biodiversity-related legislation. Then in October 2023, Professor Áine Ryall of UCC, who is also chair of the Aarhus Convention Compliance Committee and has a particular expertise and access to justice in environmental matters and environmental law enforcement told the Oireachtas climate committee that the State has comprehensively failed to adequately fund, implement, and enforce existing national and EU biodiversity legislation.

We are here tonight debating a wind farm that was developed with complete disregard for environmental laws and the local community. As we heard, during its construction in 2003, there were significant landslides. There was one at turbine 17, which did not halt construction. There was then a second landslide at turbine 68, which dislodged 450,000 cu. m of peat. That peat moved 2.5 km away before sliding further into the Derrywee river, killing 50,000 brown trout and then going on to kill 100,000 fish in total, disrupting the local water supplies, closing off roads, resulting in farmers having to purchase water tanks as the river remained contaminated for some time afterwards.

There are reasons we have environmental legislation. It is to protect our habitats, water courses and biodiversity, and to protect communities. In 2004, ESB International and the construction company were convicted of pollution offences. They received a paltry fine of €1,200. As a result, we know now that the EU initiated legal proceedings in 2005 and in 2008 the court found that an environmental impact assessment should have been conducted before permission was granted. In 2019, the European Court of Justice reaffirmed that Ireland was in breach of environmental law and the EU imposed fines of €5 million, with fines of €15,000 per day accruing until the matter was rectified. To date, the taxpayer has paid about €17 million in fines because we ignored environmental legislation. The ESB dragged its heels and obfuscated. It waited years to apply for substitute consent and when it finally got its act together, the application was struck down. Why was it struck down? It is because substitute consent did not provide for public participation and it did not meet the exceptionality test, as required by the European Court of Justice. We now know that in 2022 the ESB finally decided to take that wind farm offline, but it is still waiting to decommission the wind farm. The reason it is waiting is that it wants Galway County Council to enforce the planning permission on it. It does not have to apply for planning permission if Galway County Council issues an enforcement order for decommissioning.

At every step of the way there seems to be a blatant disregard for the law when it comes to this wind farm. I do not think that reopening the wind farm sends out the required message that we are in a biodiversity crisis. We are also in a climate crisis and we need more renewable energy, but we must be compliant with the law. We must respect the court's findings and uphold the law. Turning a blind eye to environmental obligations and leaving it to the taxpayer to somehow just pick up the tab is insulting to the public but also insulting to ourselves as legislators who are supposed to be upholding environmental law.

I just want to touch on the suggestion that this Bill will somehow address our energy security and will help us reach our renewable energy targets of 80% renewables by 2030. The language the Minister of State used is that he said it would not make a material difference. Frankly, I think that is a red herring. While it beggars belief that we have a wind farm that is going to be decommissioned, it sends out of powerful message that one cannot just ignore or turn a blind eye to the law. We all know that the real threat to our energy security is the exponential growth of large energy users, namely data centres. It was stated that Derrybrien is producing enough electricity for 30,000 homes. Data centres are currently using more electricity than all the rural houses on this island. That is the real threat to our energy security.I will work with any Member of this House to address that issue and deal with the real issues around our energy security. It is not right to send the message that somehow certain companies and projects are above the law. It is also worth noting that this wind farm has been operating at a major loss for years and is also coming close to the decommissioning phase anyway. The lifespan for wind turbines is around 20 to 30 years, so this wind farm is coming to the end of its lifespan. We are about to send out a very strong message that the law can just be ignored if it is thought there are exceptional reasons for doing so. That is not a message that we as legislators should be sending out.