Sir, – The Irish Times must be commended for its "Energy options for Ireland" series (February 21st–24th).
The policies being pursued to achieve a co-operative sustainable renewable energy future that are currently being rolled out by the State’s national grid operator fly in the face of the harsh realities these plans are imposing on rural communities throughout the country.
We often look to Denmark when making comparisons because of our similarities in size, population, wind resources and co-operative tradition. However, the similarities stop there. Denmark has a successful and flourishing renewable energy solution precisely because, from the outset, its government embraced national buy-in by pursuing a community benefit approach. For example, Danish wind turbine co-operatives have installed approximately 86 per cent of all wind turbines across the country.
Now look at the Irish approach. When local communities finally realised the scale of the energy infrastructure projects, they found that there is no national pylon planning guidelines, there are no laws protecting citizens from electro-magnetic radiation, there are no laws that protect citizens from property devaluation and there are no transparent and independently audited assessments of the economic, environmental and social impacts. These issues have not been adequately addressed for rural communities, resulting in little or no buy-in.
There has been a glaring lack of any realistic public consultation to the extent that, even allowing for the eventual capitulation following public outcries, with the process looking more like a box-ticking exercise than any meaningful and genuine dialogue.
If Ireland currently has an energy overcapacity as stated by the owners of the grid, the ESB, and consumers are paying energy prices way above the EU average, surely it is fair to ask who is really benefitting, or is due to benefit, from these massive infrastructure projects? As things stand, it is certainly not the Irish citizen.
Finally, any management consultant will tell you that a crucial aspect of any major change-management strategy is the achievement of buy-in from primary stakeholders. If you are failing to achieve buy-in, rather than ignoring the problem by labelling rural communities as Nimbys and naysayers, surely, as The Irish Times so eloquently put it in its promotional advertisement, we must look for the "why". – Yours, etc,
KIERAN CONNORS,
Grid Link Action Group,
Kildare.