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THE EU’S COURT of Justice has fined the State €5m over its failure to comply with EU legislation that might have prevented landslides linked to the construction of a wind farm in the west of Ireland in 2003.
The penalty is set to increase further as EU’s top court set an additional daily fine of €15,000 until the Government achieves compliance with environmental legislation on assessing the impact of the wind farm Derrybrien, Co Galway.
The fine is due to the “seriousness and duration” of the failure to carry out an environmental impact assessment on the wind farm in the 11 years since a previous CJEU ruling on 3 July, 2008.
The legal action by the European Commission followed a massive landslide at Derrybrien on 16 October, 2003, when tonnes of peat were dislodged and polluted the Owendalulleegh River, resulting in the death of around 50,000 fish.
At the time Derrybrien was the country’s biggest-ever wind farm, and one of the largest in Europe, with 70 turbines. Its construction required the removal of large areas of forest and the extraction of peat up to a depth of 5.5 metres.
The European Commission said two investigations had concluded that the environmental disaster had been linked to the construction work on the wind farm.
The Government had claimed that delays in carrying out a requirement under the 2008 ruling to conduct an environmental impact assessment of the Derrybrien wind farm was due to the complexity of underlying legal issues.
The owner of the windfarm has refused to undergo a “substitute consent” procedure, which is used in exceptional circumstances to allow for the regularisation of planning permissions which are granted for applications in breach of EU environmental legislation.
The Government claimed it could not legally compel the owner of the windfarm to submit to the process, and a remedial environmental impact assessment could only be carried out with their voluntary cooperation.
However, the CJEU rejected the State’s argument and said there was nothing to prevent an assessment being carried out after the construction of the wind farm.
Ireland had claimed the action was unfounded as it could not legally withdraw the planning permission which had been granted to the operator of the wind farm.
Earlier this year, the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government said it had been in regular communication with officials in Brussels on the issue.
It also said that it remained committed to ensuring that an appropriate environmental review of the wind farm took place.
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take it from the 13bn from Apple – be grand
@thomas patrick: That would be theft of money that does not belong to this country. Try again.
@thomas patrick:
What a waste.
Chasing after investment (and wind turbines in this case) at any cost can come with serious consequences.
Fail to plan, plan to fail as Roy Keane might say.
To rub it in, someone arguing that the law required consequences of a scheme to be considered – the Apple case – is slammed as holding up progress.
Official Ireland has been dragging this case out for over a decade. They fought the law and the law won. That won’t undo the damage done.
Govt response this week is to change the law to make it harder for people to go to Court.
Bad response.
@Reuben Gray: nice try yourself, why not take your own advice!
@Joe Noonan: Well said Joe. This was swept under the carpet by our government but it was down the tenacity of a small rural community to not accept this development being railroaded and causing immense damage
A good win for rural Ireland against carte-blanch developments of this kind. Only downside is that it’s you, me and the rest of Ireland who has to pay the fines!!
The best solution for wind farms is off shore. The Danes are leading the world in this. And our West Coast is ideal. With unobstructed winds from the expanse of the Atlantic and a huge area of coastline from North Donegal to the Southern tip of Kerry.
@Mick.: Thats right .. the wind farms will save the environment .. after we shoot all the cattle on earth and get rid of cars and stop the ocean container ships sailing of course.
@Johnny Rielly: Going a bit extreme with it there pal. That’s called a strawman argument, or in lamens terms, the ramblings of people who know little to nothing about a subject. Good job.
@Johnny Rielly: Do tell what has off shore wind farms have to do with Cattle, Cars and shipping?
Just over half of Denmark’s electricity production comes from off shore wind farm’s. Not only does it supply Denmark with an inexustable supply of electricity it also creates jobs in maintaining the turbines.
@Matthew Handibode: pot and kettle there Johnny, we are currently be told how much beef farming is affecting the climate aswell the Brazilians chopping down the Amazon for their cheap beef, on top of that the car is now being demonized as the worst mode of individual transportation, and don’t forget all those containers coming from China, particularly after the singles sale all the Chinese websites had yesterday
@Mick.: We pay over the odds already for wind generated power without making it even more expensive due to higher installation/maintenance costs. And I seem to recall a report which said that the west coast was less than ideal due to excessive wind. Apparently turbine blades can be damaged in winds over 90kph which would be fairly common offshore in the west. Same report said off East coast would be better. Less wind but less downtime plus easier maintenance.
For a change EU is right. There are definite changes required in planning rules for windmills.
The problems have its roots in operators wish to obtain “cheapest possible access roads” to wind farms. Hence access roads on the mountains are simply “dug down” to the rocks and then filled as required.The long term results are devastating, one short term effect is the landslide in question.
Problems and effects:
1/ The new roads are often draining the bogs from day one, drying out some boglands.
2/ When it later rains the dug down roads serve as channels for rain that normally would be buffered over weeks and months in the bog
3/ Also “normal” heavy rains can then quickly, in a matter of hours, form sometimes lethal flash floods, as already seen and wrongly attributed to “climate change”
4/ The so drained bogs are basically killed by the deep roads when they dry up.
The result of (1) and (4) above can be devastating in a dry summer, as forest fires then can spread into (large) areas of dried bogland and last for very long times and even threaten the very windmills the roads were created for.
The first realistic solutions are to force old and new wind farms to raise all access roads above surrounding bogland so that bogland is undisturbed or recover, no longer drained in deep channels. Cabling must of course also not constitute drains.
It is also scandalous that people that have taken their fuel in orderly manners from bogs are not permitted to “interfere with nature”, while the same governors freely permit wind farms doing 1000 times worse damage of similar kind.
Meanwhile, autistic children not being in receipt of their right to an education in secondary schools across Ireland.
@Mary Morrisey: I’ve a 3 year old autistic daughter, I worry for her education
@Martin Harte: it is a very sad country that no one cares to get special needs support to those that need it all no problem getting money for direct provision etc don’t see Ray Darcy making the public aware of the problems some people have trying to do the best for special needs kids everything they get they have fight for
@Geraldine Fenton: absolutely Geraldine, a special needs child has to have parents who will jump into the trenches for them and fight tooth and nail for them day in day out, Ray is to busy to be helpful to us, he’s got his pockets to line up
Do we not pay EU enough without fines..
Irexit…
@Darren B: how about the people make them accountable for a change and start by swapping out FFG. I agree with not jumping ship from Europe.
@Willy Mc Bride: People like you who feel the same way about the EU in this country are a minority. 89% of the population support the EU.
The EU Court is holding the Government to account for its failure to remedy a problem that they have known about for over a decade and have refused to deal with.
@Willy Mc Bride: Yeah, wot’d the EU ever do for Areland, innit?
@Ich bin brendan: Swap them out with who?
@Willy Mc Bride: so because the EU is holding the Irish government accountable for not doing their job, you want to leave the EU?
How is that working out fit the UK?
Wind farms are an environmental disaster.
They exacerbate flooding due to the massive concrete bases being built on our hills for turbines which cause faster run-off during periods of heavy rain. Old wind farms that have passed their sell-by date much earlier than expected and are being replaced by larger turbines, each of which requires a new concrete base. They old bases are left in the ground. As you will appreciate, the mountain will eventually be covered in concrete, a highly-polluting process itself, and this will increase flooding many-fold
@Owen Logos: Where do you people get this stuff from at all lol.
@Owen Logos: Owen you are an absolute moonbeam lad. I have never heard as much fabricated waffle.
@Owen Logos: Plus the hundreds of birds killed that fly into the blades as they rotate. And there was a survey done on a wind farm in England when they cleaned the blades off and collected dead insects of the ground it weighed in at nearly a ton.
@brendan H: ROFLOL, need to ban cars then. Their windscreens must be an ecological disaster!
@Owen Logos: while I do agree that our mountains are being covered with concrete and the natural bog land is being destroyed what do you suggest we do with 100 +meters of concrete and steel rebar from the old bases?
@Peter Hughes: You are a concrete denier?? Then you must live in your basement. Sad.
@Doire: You are a concrete denier.
@Brendan Cooney: Wind farms disproportionately kill birds of prey. Cars usually do not fly at heights of 180m in the air.
@Edward Fitzgerald: Simple. We should not pour 1000s of tonnes of concrete and steel into mountain areas at all.
@Owen Logos: what do you propose instead. Cried about fossil fuels now crying about renewable sources, maybe your the kind of person who would never be happy.
@Doire: Haha you must be joking !! Ireland’s fossil fuel imports are still high after building hundreds of wind farms. No power station has been shutdown anywhere and replaced by a wind farm. The power stations must be kept running at all times, takes too long to turn on and off. So wind farms are not an alternative to fossil fuels, same as standing on your head is not an alternative to eating food to satisfy hunger.
@Owen Logos: i Agree. In this case to dry out the mountain after landslide the dug 25-30km of drains some of them 6ft wide – 8ft deep – that’s a big impact on the top of a mountain.
@Owen Logos: i Agree. In this case to dry out the mountain after landslide the dug 25-30km of drains some of them 6ft wide – 8ft deep – that’s a big impact on the top of a mountain.
@Owen Logos: look at all the money we have paid in out PSO levy and will continue to do so like every thing else making some people richer
@Brendan Cooney: Nice bit of whataboutery.
@Peter Hughes: Do you still deny that pouring tonnes of concrete into mountain or bog causes flooding? Do you still deny reality?
Eirher a fairly lame excuse for not doing a review of the environmental disaster, or,
another example of how overly reliant and crippled we are by ‘the legal process’. If there is an environmental disaster in such circumstances there should be full review of all aspects regardless of the wind farm owners objections. Safety to ensure it doesn’t happen again and not allow potential cover ups!
Start making small daily deductions from the politicians responsible and we would quickly see some action.
Another example of the government not leading by example
Who is getting sacked for this?
Take it out off the coffee, carbon tax their so environment driven .glad to see them put our taxes to good use
Expensive mistake , wonder who signed off on it?
Guess , we will never know, I thought any project this size would have numerous reports done , especially on the environmental impact.
Who told the EU
Where does that money go
@Kevin Fogarty: The more it costs then the more you can skim from the top, 10,000 euro hammers lol.
So the same genius group that got those falling apart schools built and that new childrens hospital they are building now in Dublin as well as getting an Isil terrorist member back to live in Ireland again… Anyone see a pattern forming?
So the people who dig up and burn bogland failed to protect boglands when cashing in on green energy incentives… Shocking
@Gaseous Vertebrate: That was an EU law about protecting our boglands that did all that…
@TamuMassif2019: Ireland has been I’m breach of local planning and EU law for decades over peat bog extraction. It was all ignored rightly or wrongly for economic benefits
Nice try Reuben, why not take your own advice?
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