The Public's Right to Information and Justice in Relation to the Environment

Column Title: Is Éire Still Aarhus?

Absence of Evidence is Not Evidence of Absence

The Aarhus Convention is a legally binding United Nations agreement that gives the public a right to information and justice in relation to the environment. It was implemented in 2001 to protect human rights in the face of climate change and climate action. The Aarhus Convention is also meant to provide a means to exercise those rights. But are we able to access information? And, more importantly, can we get our information considered by the Department of Public Prosecution and other powers that be, in time to stop the inexorable corporate advance. The reason I mention the DPP is that our current Protected Disclosure Act and procedures involve only a quiet Unfair Dismissal case, in a Circuit Court, wherein the information disclosed is never sent to the Department of Public Prosecution or heard in any court, and in our case not even lodged in the Law Library. 

I am Frances, just an animal lover and social worker in Kilkenny, who didn’t want to know about all the bad things happening. Nonetheless, I became a conduit for information in regard to public expenditure over the last fifteen years. I wanted only to realize my vision for people, places and animals and started entering tenders for public contracts that seemed like funds assigned for lots of good and crucial enterprises, innovations and social change. 

The first thing I discovered is that you can only get a contract if you already have a contract of equal size, which ruled out all the non-profit-making organizations that had been delivering these essential services to date, on a shoe string. Take education for infants, aged 1-3. A dubious objective anyway perhaps, as that is when one-on-one healthy attachment patterns are formed through relationships with one’s parents and care-givers. None of the play-orientated, role-model orientated pedagogies were alerted to the public contracts on e-tenders and wouldn’t have been eligible if they had applied to roll out such a plan, even though they were the only ones who could safely have done it. 

Only companies of a size to have a dedicated procurement department see the contracts. Well, that is until I came along, tailoring ideas to contract delivery needs and applying for finance. 

As there were contracts in everything from social housing, for which I proposed bio-architecture and local builders, to management of the National Biodiversity Data centre, which is supposed to be a public resource for a professional opinion on the environmental stressors caused by proposed developments (which currently each community has to pay for, by way of a survey of rare species and a court case, to challenge destructive plans), I have now shared my vision for every area. No one realized that if they’d given me one little win, one contract to do, it would have probably shut me up for years. Look at anyone immersed in a project or job. They do not have time to look around. I was no exception, I have been very busy leading Ecology Curriculum Field Studies in Castlecomer Discovery Park, teaching piano and keeping the show on the road here at my Organic Trust certified horticultural farm and orchard. But I did not once get a contract great or small. This has meant my creative muse kept guiding me to explore more solutions to our nation’s challenges and articulate ways to navigate them. 

I want a transition to a vegan organic economy, encouraged by the Humane Party in the States, who had sufficient funding to do a full economic plan, and have two candidates running for election in the last few years. Their research showed that America’s GDP would rise by a whole one percent if such a transition was implemented.  

But now I’m writing this article with a ‘before I go’ theme. Go I must as the government’s latest ‘green technology’ plans involve reducing the value of my property from 450,000 to less than half. And it is not just here. I am, as usual being a voice for others. This time, there are 320 homeowners around the seven huge wind turbines they have planned. There are 120 homeowners around the  seven there is already an application in with An Bord Planâla for. And on it goes, with hundreds of homes around each seven turbines applied for. No mention of the pylons, roads and associated substations. I am not talking about aesthetics here, although that is why we all moved here and the natural environment. I am talking about the massive extraction of wealth from hundreds of men and women, when instantly they won’t be able to live in their homes nor sell them, while millions are gained by the government as they trade in carbon and energy credits off our misery and consequent ill health and poverty.

So, can I tell you a story? It is based on true events. I do not want to say goodbye so if any themes appeal to you feel free to take them on. I would love that. 

Decades ago, I built a fourth level university forum and think tank, in a wooded valley, where two streams meet, and no house or building can be seen for miles. Enlisting Michael Rice, a bioarchitect from Laois, a sacred geometry retreat was founded where hundreds of guests came to de-stress naturally, as well as consciously, as I am gifted diviner, able to intuit any sort of disturbance, be it physical, mental or emotional and resolve it. We are all gifted with these skills of course but I’ve met very few who have cultivated them. 

I wanted to awaken guests to the truth about animals’ higher consciousness than our own. Dogs and pigs lay around the garden and languidly wagged their tails and rolled in for a belly rub, when gardening was under way, making it difficult to get things done, although creating a playful atmosphere. One guest had a brother who had received a heart transplant from a pig. That is how close their hearts are to ours… but don not think of it as an organ ‘donation’. The animals have no choice. 

This idea of informed consent has come up many times has it not? Many booked in for the raw vegan meals. And I had a meals on wheels pilot scheme, bringing these dishes around to people who weren’t well or who had children with intolerances to dairy. This was even before they heard how the Child Cancer Society leaflet recommends at least 51% of all food consumed should be raw.

Another visitor was a plant pathologist who helped plan the market garden. This is when inside information started to come thick and fast again. The plant pathologist was from Honduras (arguably the most dangerous country in the world) She was here for interview with Teagasc and we stayed in touch. It came to light that a multitude of distinguished foreign academics were employed in genetically engineered potato trials. No Irish researchers were involved at all, maybe because GMOs in general and GMO potatoes in particular are not allowed in Ireland. Raising the issue, two Green Party councillors were able to put a stop to it. Now I realize that we do not know that for certain as who can possibly regulate the regulating boards. None of this was covered in the newspapers though. 

A few years ago, I notified the county council I was withdrawing my consent to be governed by all the bad actors, and asked to be taken off the voting register. This was something men and women can do, until the public servants remember that they are supposed to be acting on our behalf, in our interests.

In 2020, I was a writer for the main genetic engineering watch dog in the world, the Institute For Responsible Technology. I was to summarize articles, and proof read and research for their White Papers on the immediate hazards of contaminating the gene pool with the easily available gene editing sets, and vast unregulated laboratory operations, who are generating millions of gene-edited microbes, with no clear or safe disposal method for the ones that didn’t work. 

I saw how disrupting the atmosphere was totally possible, with the new green technology of gene editing algae on vast scale to capture the carbon from fossil fuel plants. This same algae photosynthesizes in the ocean to produce up to 60% of our oxygen, depending on season. Should an edited version persist in our waterways, it could over run the algae and its complex interactions, and collapse the atmosphere we rely on. We have accepted these developments as good as they have been tagged on from accepted natural cross-breeding enhancements. But they have no similarity. The genome is damaged in gene editing, causing a limitless amount of mutations and unexpected side effects. 

Then as well there’s GOF, Gain of Function research funded by joint military and pharmaceutical companies with the explicit objective of protecting public health.  It seems impossible that the intentional profiteering and threats from gain of function research, can be overlooked though. In secret laboratories, diseases are given new capabilities through gene editing, such as airborne transmission when beforehand the disease could only pass through bodily fluids or touch. Or gene-editing is used to increase the deadliness of the disease. The research is done in the name of pre-empting a pandemic and justifying research for antidotes, to these hypothetically dangerous microbes and outbreaks. The question is could these engineered diseases actually happen in nature and pose a threat. The answer is no, on the same basis that breeding is fundamentally different from genetic engineering. 

Then we researched bioweapons, which had been an area of expertize for me. As a long-time peace worker, I was aware of biological agents being the first weapons acknowledged as weapons of mass destruction. That was 50 years before the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and yet we have seemed to have forgotten the risks of biological warfare. It is now as if people are assimilating the prospect of nuclear power as if it’s another plausible green energy supplier, despite the huge problem with radioactive waste in barrels already and in pipelines being delivered to Ireland and the devastating effects of leaks, explosions or melt downs. Interestingly, the UK Government White Paper on energy, was the first White Paper to not include costs. So there was no comparison possible between the fossil fuels, nuclear, wind on and off shore or solar, or water.  The extortionate costs of building the small modular reactors that are supposed to deliver this power were not addressed by the paper but I worked with two professors who delivered their own paper, definitively comparing the costs and demonstrating how nuclear weapons technology is sponsored by nuclear civil power projects, in order to have sufficient trained engineers, and will consequently be funded by the public, through their energy bills and the public purse. 

I found out that the council overseeing the development and regulation of gene editing was based in Ireland and none of the members were aware of, or raising the extraordinary risks of surprise mutations, impossible laboratory security, and no regulation, as everything is patented and allowed to be private. This, of course, means that open field trials are supposed to be forbidden but currently no governing body needs to be informed of field trials.

We are supposed to evolve, that was what we did the last time there were great extinction.

So I set about envisioning what a new future would look like and I got my first opportunity in 2015 to enter a public contract competition. I had discovered e-tenders and saw real amounts of money to look after every section of society, in a progressive economic way; a new vision for éiRe (the Clo Gaelic spelling). The first tender was for the management of the county dog pound. She proposed the implementation of a new system for rehoming, rehabilitating, educating and supporting responsible pet ownership. Instead of trying to budget to pay vets’ bills that other rescues cannot manage, I planned to recruit a newly qualified vet as a member of the core staff.

What a mission it was to be: Both entering the tender and managing this slightly heart-breaking stream of lost, abandoned and abused dogs. The wardens’ tasks were to inspect puppy farms in the area, of which there were over 300, with varying degrees of licenses. Puppy farms have considerable carte blanche as they count as businesses and one unsavoury fellow was quoted as saying “you don’t need eyes to pump out puppies”. Still, I had someone for every task, including volunteers and fostering families for dogs ‘in pup’ and some firm but friendly men to deal with the difficult customers, canine and inhumane.

One company was ahead of the game, however, and went down to the pound to ask the important questions for their budget and these were shared to other tenderers. The only question they asked was “how much per carcass?” I gulped, obviously, when I saw that question and worried about their priorities and hurried to get my application in. I was pretty sure that that company would not get awarded the contract as the Animal Welfare Act says municipal shelters must be run by animal welfare organizations. Three months went by and excitement built. Sadly, the letter came from the council saying sorry you’ve been unsuccessful but we’re delighted to say the ACS (Animal Care Society) Cork was awarded the contract. I immediately rang to congratulate them. They had clearly been in rescue for years and were a brilliant rehoming team, with a lovely website and lots of stories of rehabilitation and forever homes. I offered my help, as I live nearby and all the volunteers, who were also local and were going to help me. I could not believe my ears, when the ACS said they had never heard of the contract. Back to the council in a hurry saying oh no, there’s been a mistake and all that came back was a re-issued letter saying ACS Four Seasons. ACS now stood for Animal Collection Service: The company whose main job is collecting and disposing of carcasses and fallen animals. What a captured market and potential to double dip. The contract for seizing dogs, taking in lost dogs (required to only keep them for five days) and a separate business in disposing of their bodies.  Still sure it was a terrible mistake, vigils and petitions ensued but there was no u-turn on the contract until a journalist wrote a piece. The newspapers can move mountains where cases can be brushed under the carpet. 

The article spoke of a Horse Control Firm with only an address in Riga Latvia, the home of the biggest Animal Body Parts factory in the world, and how they had been given the management of several horse and dog pounds here. That was when the ACS themselves pulled out. 

Undeterred, I went back to the drawing board of e-Tenders and with my Green Consultancy team, applied for Climate Action Training for Local Authorities, Council Tendering for Green Deal money for local communities, and the Management of the Biodiversity Data Centre, with their remit to produce reports for Wildlife Protection Authorities, Planning Offices, concerned groups and individuals, on request. My plan proposed a stipend for 10 postgraduate researchers in a multitude of fields (a pun that always makes me laugh), from environmental studies, to ethics, to zoology to town planning. This assembled forum would be experienced in drilling down into data and asking pertinent questions and giving non-professional but considered opinions in response to requests. They could be used to support or oppose developments. 

In addition the company that rolled out nationwide training many times before would launch ‘before and after’ citizen scientist projects in every university to survey the biodiversity. Ireland is being fined on a daily basis for non-compliance with EU Biodiversity Directives, related to neither surveying nor protecting our biodiversity and areas of special significance or sensitivity. 

The timing was perfect as the year before the proposed new wifi was rolled out, involving new masts, short frequency waves and a widespread concern at the impact on birds’ and insects’ ability to navigate. If the rollout was staggered, the impact on biodiversity could have been monitored and the rollout stopped, if there were too many adverse events recorded on the data reporting system. 

The irresistible icing on the cake, I thought, was to tie in a public banking system. I worked with the Sparkassen Community Bank in Germany on it that has an international cooperative arm. We also had the founder of public banking in the States, Richard C Cook. And then there were Irish partners too. Private banks in Germany only have 12% of the market, whereas in Ireland they have 100%, even the Credit Unions are theirs now. So in our system, the golden peg would be water, and the protection of water and biodiversity. Credit would be assessed on the projects’ contribution to the community and ability to be productive, like Subsistence farming, without being in any way exploitative. This could be easily achieved using the Sustainability Goals Data Centre, for loan assessment. In public banks, all the money borrowed and spent stays within the community – either the county or the region - and no abstract digital debt held over men and women’s heads.  Within two weeks of sharing the public bank proposal with the key financial department, two ministers met with the central bank and sold Ireland’s water for a very small figure.  

This is when I at last realized the tyrannical situation that my passion, ethics, energy and ideas were being harvested and now they were falling into the wrong hands. I had always hoped I was at least planting the seeds of inspired solutions to common dilemmas. I knew that with public contracts, all tenderers’ proposals had to be read and assessed and I think that one day a government minister or some other public expenditure official will take a plan forwards, pretending it was theirs. I do not care at all about intellectual property. I want to lead the country out of its disempowerment and dependence on chemically produced food, and supermarkets, and energy suppliers.

Eventually the KBC Bank held a competition simply called Brilliant Ideas, where they invited entrants and promised funding for the best. It finally dawned on me, after articulating five more strokes of genius, that this wasn’t ‘harvesting’ this was stealing and misusing.   

I stepped back a few years ago and taught Ecology and classical piano, and began to paint my ideas in oils.  I corrected my status to living woman, when many did not even realize that, under Maritime law, we are no more than dead men lost at sea. I lived honourably and in private until the grim reapers – corporations wielding wind turbines came to take the energy I had generated over 20 years at Harmony Hall. The maps show concentric circles around the property and the creeping inevitability of these wind turbines, 185 metres tall.

There is no obvious way to resist. Agreements are in place (ref. https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/oireachtas-tv/cr3-live/), with 1) the government: They can build as close to homes as they want, 2) Public Expenditure Department: They can claim any amount of capital expenditure without a ceiling, 3) Revenue: There will be no tax payable on any amount of product or profit and 4) An Bord Pleanala: Whatever the observations – previously called ‘objections’ – they receive, their strategy is to approve wind farms. This is regardless of unanimous rejection by elected councillors. This is regardless of extensive findings used in precedent legal cases won, of damage to human and animal health, private property, wildlife and the environment. The nuisance and the trespass below and above ground are not even considered.

Do my good neighbours and I get to live happily ever after, in harmony, inspiring others to live in a self sufficient way, aligned with and caring for nature with a sense of stewardship and kindness towards life in the valleys and woods?

At the moment, it looks like the answer is no, they must try and sell their homes before they are rendered unliveable and unsellable.

Unless, I thought, there is a legal avenue. There is a public interest law service after all. And, Oh wait! There is the Aarhus Convention. And, Oh look! The EU courts have found… in our favour and Hang on! Ireland’s Supreme Court found…in our favour. Can we put all that information together? Probably not. And will the planning office ask, where will the cables go? How will the 60 metre-long wings get here? Where will the pylons be? Where will the substations every 2km be sited? 

Maybe we could get an interim injunction, to give An Bord Pleanala time to read the research? I wrote one more article to raise awareness of the problems with wind farms, just to make sure the last word was not that some people find them aesthetically displeasing and some don’t mind. And here is what I hope will find its way into a centre spread, with pictures of this important building where all the work was done and maybe, just maybe, others would see how hard it is to access justice, when there is a surface narrative of energy and climate action thinly veiling a massive land and wealth snatch going on, and an infinite cache of abstract carbon and energy credits to be traded until kingdom come for governments and corporations. 

Nearby turbines half the size have no substation and no sign of pylons carrying the energy away, in whichever the safe AC or DC current is. What does this mean? Were the turbines erected and simply left there grinding away, not even turned on, producing nothing- but still generating plenty of money for the companies and the random energy-generation figures being used for accounting? Is that the plan for these humungus ones? Who will answer my questions, I wonder? 

     

Absence of Evidence Is Not Evidence of Absence

Does the government proactively heed the Aarhus Convention and the warnings of research itself, and are public servants and bodies placing this democracy at the centre of their decision-making? Can we look for a way that we can bring our cases and evidence to bear without risking everything? And, more importantly, why do we have to? 

As we speak, there is a planning application being considered by An Bord Pleanála for wind turbines to be sited inland of 185 metres in height, with a footprint and wingspan of 4 acres each. Elected county councillors unanimously voted against zoning, for wind, this highly populated county - which is very short of housing, has no affordable housing and commands high rents and high property value. It is happening all over the country.

By law, men and women are to be the beneficiaries of the natural resources harnessed here. Instead of wind farms being Irish-owned or coming with a built-in commitment to providing free electricity for life, the value of properties anywhere near to these developments has been shown to drop by anything between 30% and 50%, and up to 100% when a buyer can’t be found. No To Wind Turbines explains “This statement didn’t alarm everyone as a lot of people would never consider selling or moving. BUT.. most mortgage rates depend on your loan to value rate. Loan-to-value (LTV) is calculated simply by taking the loan amount and dividing it by the value of the asset or collateral being borrowed against. In the case of a mortgage, this would be the mortgage amount divided by the property's value. The lower the % the lower the interest rate. If your property value is lowered because of this proposed wind farm development then your LTV will increase which in turn will increase your interest rate even though there is no change to your house.” Ref https://www.facebook.com/No-to-Wind-Turbines-in-the-Old-Leighlin-Coolcullen-areas-195497060639423 

“The Supreme Court overturned a decision by An Bord Pleanála for a windfarm in Inchigeelagh, Co Cork, on foot of an appeal by a couple who run a horticulture business in the area.” Here we run an organic horticulture business too. Will An Bord Pleanála be sure not to make the same mistake twice? On another occasion, the Supreme Court told them they had made the wrong decision to grant planning for a wind farm as there was a rare hawk living in the area. More to the point, why is it so easy to ignore the damage to human lives?  

What a ‘cash cow’ for some massive corporations, while heralding the diminishment of men and women’s one major asset, security, quality of life and the legacies we can leave for future generations. “David Connolly, chief executive of the Irish Wind Energy Association, says: “It is vital that communities are on board when you bring wind farms to an area but our general experience is that 80%-90% of people are supportive”. In the current applications, every single elected representative opposed the zoning for wind and every single person living here who has heard about the plans, oppose them vehemently. So much so that the applications by-passed the county council planning office altogether and are being submitted directly to An Bord Pleanála. There are yellow signs on every gateway and people are meeting in secret to support each other in protecting ourselves. 

Joe Noonan, a Cork-based solicitor who specialises in environmental law sums up this problem. “The main stumbling block is an air of unreality bordering on dishonesty about the public stance in relation to wind energy,” he says.

“There is a well-known, documented, potential serious noise problem from badly sited wind turbines that has been found in several places around the country. What one would expect is an acknowledgment of that and a determination to face it and learn from the mistakes. What is happening is a veil of silence over the reality. It is not being addressed and what that does is makes people really mad, because these are genuine people.”

We might have hoped that the planning office follows government regulations to the letter? Sadly there are no regulations in place as to how far from homes wind turbines should be placed. The last time ‘set back’ guidelines were addressed (along with flicker and noise levels from turbines 105 decibels) was in 2006 when the turbines were half the height. There has been procrastination for six years over updated guidelines. Furthermore, the amount of electricity generated will also not be regulated. These are to be wind farms built by a French company, to offset their use of nuclear which is an environmental ‘black mark’. The turbines will generate an unmeasured amount of electricity, and a limitless amount of carbon credits and energy credits that will be bargained between Ireland inc and the rest of the EU. “EDF, which operates all of Britain's eight nuclear power plants providing around 13% of the country's electricity, said it had already invested over 7 billion pounds ($8.4 billion) in the UK nuclear fleet since 2009, delivering over 30% more output than originally forecast. 9 Mar 2023 And they made another investment to (https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/edf-energy-extend-lifetime-two-uk-nuclear-plants-2023-03-09/#:~:text=EDF%2C%20which%20operates%20all%20of,more%20output%20than%20originally%20forecast extend the life of two of the reactors for two years. When a corporation has invested a great deal of money here in eiRe, how can our authorities possibly put health and safety stipulations around what they do, for the health and safety of mere mortals living here? Or, indeed regulate them in any way?  

What happens to a place when a wind farm is erected only looks beneficial on an accounting pad. In reality, three quarters of wildlife is immediately lost, from pollinators, to birds, to all species on the ground. The current applications are to erect wind turbines and associated infrastructure to a valley full of bats and red squirrels. The first are known to drop dead, even flying behind turbines, they would not mistakenly fly into them. The latter are an endangered species. And then when three quarters of all wild life suddenly die, does that not become a putrid decomposition and attraction of hardier, less welcome species, like the GMO mosquitos bred or even hardier less welcome native breeds? GMO mosquitos are manufactured in Oxitec, Oxford for sale to obliterate other mosquito species for example. It is probably happening here as well. The new mosquitos are supposed to be all males and not biting females, but in their millions that is hard to achieve. 

Or maybe there will be no life at all? And most definitely, a contamination of the waterways, through the natural woodland. How can the government justify such environmental damage? And there are effects on animals. Have we forgotten we are animals too, same blood and bones? “A study was conducted by PHO candidate (A PHO is a legal entity formed by hospitals and physicians that allow them to come together to pursue common interests in a collaborative manner), Mariana Alves-Pereina, after horses born or raised developed asymmetric flexural limb deformities shortly after wind turbines became operational in November 2006. There were no other changes in the area during that time. Mariana wrote "Tissue analyses of the defected tendons were preformed and revealed the classical features of Low Frequency Noise (LFN)-induced biological responses: thickening of blood vessel walls due to proliferation of collagen in the absence of an inflammatory process." The study on 11 foals showed issues with front limb, including coffin/pedal bone rotation and clubbed feet. Several of the horses had to be euthanized. The towers were installed 984-2297 feet from their farm. The study showed healthy horses brought into the farm showed adverse effects shortly afterwards. https://stopthesethings.com/.../dr-mariana-alves-pereira.../

Dr Mariana Alves-Pereira also shared how to test for the effects of low-frequency turbine noise. But why do we have to do that? It seems absurd and passively aggressive towards men and women to foist these developments on them without even alluding to these concerns and offering even anecdotal reassurances. If larger animals, like horses have been shown to develop bone deformities, it is highly likely that they could arise in young girls and boys in the vicinity. As our law books tell us ‘absence of evidence is not evidence of absence’.

Other harms to human health were already agreed by the European Court of Justice who said that people with homes in the vicinity were adversely affected up to four years before wind companies even ‘broke sod’ or they use the term ‘started groundworks’, due to the stress the applications caused and the sense of powerlessness to stop them. Each turbine is over two thirds as tall as the Eiffel Tower and yet will only stand for 30 years, after which the 60 metre-long blades, which are not biodegradable or recyclable will be dumped in the desert, and more manufactured. The turbines emit an ever-changing vibration and sound (which therefore you can never get used to and ignore; a low grade and degrading frequency; a flickering light, and a dominance of the landscape and sky for miles, inside and outside people’s houses. They make life intolerable for any living thing, let alone men and women dealing with tinnitus, autism, or any other condition. It is common knowledge that stress and disrupted Circadian rhythms (which are an internal 24hr body clock, which manage essential functions and establish sleep patterns) compound every condition.   

We would like to claim Trespass, and the law is on our side. In regard to property rights above and below the ground, it is to be considered airspace trespass if something interferes with “the ordinary use and enjoyment of his land.” In regard to below the ground, there is the matter of the dangerous and destructive quarrying required to lay a foundation for these so- called green technologies. The foundations themselves will involve thousands of tonnes of cement, one of the least ecologically-sound building materials.

The objections should not just be limited to the four-acre site per turbine and 2km danger zone acknowledged by some application maps. Approval for the first seven turbines would imply approval for electricity substations within two kilometres, and strings of high voltage pylons in every direction, both of which are renowned for emitting radiation and being linked to raising cancer in the area. The cables, pylons, and substations are the financial boon for the ESB, who are the only corporation who can install this infrastructure. This means they set a huge price per metre to facilitate the turbine companies to connect them up. This infrastructure does not exist yet and Britain, who are further along still do not have the infrastructure and are passing on the cost of turning off wind farms to customers, on top of everything else. https://news.sky.com/story/britons-paying-hundreds-of-millions-to-turn-off-wind-turbines-as-network-cant-handle-the-power-they-make-on-the-windiest-days-12822156?fbclid=IwAR24WhC13at4gLDhB3b4M8pQ3U0mGqf3ynkshrrdt4-jYGdK0gW2v5BFo9I

There is currently no minimum distance from a building that pylons must be placed, so the turbine shown to home owners may be a kilometre or two away but the 60-metre high pylons may only be 12 ft from our gable end. Then there will be the roads, which are currently one and a half car’s width, which will need to be turned into major roads that can carry 80 tonne, 120 metre long lorries. We saw one pass above on a motorway bridge last night. It was like a 50cc motorbike with the silencer taken out. You hear it and see it coming for miles but it seems to take an eternity to pass. 

There will not be a hedgerow or other liveable habitat for man or beast left but it would be a valuable contract for the Roads Authority. These roads and each wind farm of 7 turbines are being entered on separate planning applications, direct to An Bord Pleanála, so individuals and communities can’t afford to respond to all of them. What would that be? Seven farms multiplied by 78 euro, 70 for the appeal and 8 euro for the registered post. So that is 546 plus an appeal against the road decision, maybe more than one as there are two big roads planned. 

Critically, when one wind farm is approved without regulations in place for minimum distances from homes and livestock, or compensation, or benefit to the men, women, county, or country, the planning office will not be in a position to refuse the next application. If Ireland reneges on a deal with a foreign company, for example the EDF, France’s electricity board, the corporation making some of the applications, Ireland might be liable for costs and losses incurred by them. Remember those trade deals? 

This came up when I entered the public tender competition to map Ireland’s seaweed resource. My application was refused as they wanted to map only using a drone app and then ‘truth-test’ those findings (of how much and what sort of seaweeds were there) by some independent canoeists exploring some coastline stretches. I had proposed, though, mapping the 6000 stretches of coast line for which there are inherited licenses held. And then truth test the less accessible areas by drone. Oh no, the government body said, we do not intend to tell those with inherited rights as they will not want to disclose what they have in case they are taxed or penalized. I answered that it doesn’t matter what they have and they do not need to disclose it. It is simply important that all the seaweed that belongs to someone already is on the map, or their resources, product and licensed areas may be mapped as available and sold at a higher level to foreign corporations who harvest using mechanical methods, highly destructive to the marine environment. This it turned out was exactly the plan and because of trade deals like CETA, it will be very difficult to defend the rights of traditional seaweed harvesters or the coast where algae plumes and sewage run off are already killing the environment, because we have sold the resource, even when it wasn’t theirs to sell and any consequent losses we are liable for.

Indeed, where is the incentive for us to invite foreign applications to build wind turbines, when we will have to buy the energy back and we cannot regulate how much is produced. Maybe worst of all, there will be very little commitment to install efficient wind technology as we are soon to be buying French nuclear power too, from EDF. (Bear in mind, Germany has just rejected nuclear and refused the claim that it is a clean or green technology. Importantly for the men and women here, France does enforce guidelines in regard to minimum distances from private property that wind farms must be built. The wind turbines planned for here, would not be allowed in France.

In a chilling twist, we have simultaneously agreed to bury nuclear waste in various counties too; see the situation for Piltown County Kilkenny. Surely these questions are being considered, researched and answered thoroughly by An Bord Pleanála? If not, we would be well within our rights to ask for an urgent Interim Injuction while a process of Discovery is fully carried out. This is when a court rules that an activity must be halted until there has been full disclosure of all the information and a just decision can be made. In the context of the Aarhus Convention, these rights for information and justice are laid out, so now we only need to prove that we are the injured party. With the threat of more than halving the value of our property, exacerbating health conditions and causing more, we could argue that wind farms are a death sentence for families and the countryside, and that we’re having injured parties all over the country. 

The reality is that nobody wants to go to court so we rely on the planning office to address our objections. If we, as a community, decided to raise money to apply for an Ex Parte Injunction, where our concerns are considered by a judge without the vast power of the corporation and their legal teams present, one can only speculate how much that would cost and then we might well be asked to compensate said corporation, if they find a technicality to justify their developments and calculate their own inconvenience at having had to pause to listen to residents of the area, where they plan to build. But listen up, we are not residents or citizens under government jurisdiction, we are domiciled in our private properties and the Constitution says we are above public servants, and most definitely have standing above corporations, banks, and the ESB. Have you noticed that the government has not capped what the ESB can charge but instead have awarded odd payments of 200 euro to everyone specifically to pay the ESB more? We need to stand up and say we do not consent to this green washing over dangerous technologies and captured public bodies.

Maybe An Bord Pleanála are taking the health, environmental, tourism, livestock, heritage, biodiversity, community dangers very seriously and leaving no stone unturned. I hope so. It seems like objections have been totally undermined by re-naming them ‘observations’. We actually cannot lodge objections now, only observations. Whatever you call them, these appeals against disastrous developments proposed are being received by the national planning office in their droves and the standard responses, being returned, read “Thank you for your observations. If you would like to read more about our strategy, please follow this link”. 

This is clearly not a battle that is going to be won behind closed doors or via email links to or from avenues of appeal or justice. This has to happen in public, via the newspapers, and right here in 3D. Lets compare our strategy to Bhutan, another small country. There they have allowed no experimental technologies, let alone out-of-date vertical wind turbines, no solar farms where land is given over to glaring panels, rather than food security and there is no wifi, let alone 5G. They specialize in the small industry of generating micro hydro electricity. The slaughter of animals is banned. They have restored an ancient trail from West to East to honour their ancestors and open up to tourists to share the livelihood from welcoming visitors. We have even more claim to ancient heritage here, just where the wind farms plan to dig. Coal deposits holding the very evidence Darwin needed to prove his theory of Evolution: Fossils from the Carboniferous and Devonian periods, over 360 million years ago. When faced with those extinctions, us animals evolved. We learned to fly, we breathed oxygen for the first time. What are we doing now? We are letting dirty industries metamorphosize into secretly deadly technologies, masquerading as solutions for health, energy, communications, money, and food. But any one of those gene-edited microbes could be the end of our oxygen supply, and our food supply. Bhutan keeps its wits about it. The way they measure their success? Their gauge is not Gross Domestic Product but instead Gross Domestic Happiness. 

 

The exploitation of éiRe’s men, women, animals, water and other natural resources – don’t mention the factory ships fishing in Irish waters or the sonic blasting prospecting for gas and oil. Do not think about the sale of our water supply, thanks to our unique climate to banks, just when a public banking system was proposed using clean water as its golden peg, and the protection of water as its central loan criteria. 

All of these corporate activities are against the law but difficult to establish as Ecocide – the intentional destruction of the environment has not yet been accepted. We all also know or at least suspect that only individuals can be brought to justice, not amorphous corporate entities. But now we have the EU’s own Sustainability Goals, Just Transition and Biodiversity objectives. You will be glad to hear that I am here to tell you that what happens next is not a fait accompli, a foregone conclusion and that we should shut up and put up with it. We must find a way to exercise our rights, provided by our Constitution and the Convention and claim that éiRe is still Aarhus.