Cllr Niamh Kennedy
Election candidate Niamh Kennedy has met with the Finn Valley Wind Action Group and expressed her objections to the proposal at Carrickduff.
The Independent County Councillor previously revealed that she will be taking a stand against such wind farm proposals as part of her election campaign.
Ms Kennedy revealed “This is not even on a Donegal scale; this is the largest wind farm in planning in the Country at the moment, 49 turbines, each 156 metres in height, each one taller than the spire in O’Connell Street. It is an utterly mind-boggling industrial maze planned for an area of over forty square kilometres that runs from Lough Mourne in Barnesmore Gap to the back of Castlefin.
“Most of the turbines are planned to be erected on blanket bog or on clear felled forests and I have already spoken out in Lifford with respect to the madness of this as we wonder at measures to mitigate against future flooding in the Finn Valley. It’s all about planning they say. Poor planning in the past. Well let’s start the future better even from that point of view and not build this monstrous wind farm and destroy a great swathe of our rugged, walking hill county bordering Tyrone.”
She added that she was very alarmed that an application as complex as this with over 200 submissions from the local area to An Bord Pleanala was not facilitated with an oral hearing.
“It is mind boggling the effect on the communities, yet the wind farm company were invited to respond to all the submissions made by both statutory bodies and by the public. Even more frustrating no information has been made available from this hearing to the stakeholders.
“Where is the transparency in this? Sitting listening to the Finn Valley group I really felt for them and the toll that this massive project has had on their lives over the past year. They are alarmed and afraid for the future knowing that these towering turbines will spin in their lives for the next 25 years. Many people apparently are talking of having to move out,” she said.
Stating she was pleased that DCC objected to 33 of these turbines on the basis of visual residential amenity, she added that she disturbed that our planning authority has little say in this complex development.
“I will be travelling throughout the affected areas over the coming weeks and I will be speaking out for these people who need to have a voice,” she added.
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