More than 60 people took part in a virtual town hall to discuss the proposed wind farm for County Carlow.
Coillte has plans for a development The Blackstairs which they called the Croaghaun Wind Farm – details of that here.
Concerns have been raised of the level of public consultation, despite Coillte telling KCLR it carried out a significant campaign.
Cornelia McCarthy of the Save Mount Leinster this morning told KCLR News that the most important thing about last night’s digital gathering was listening to each other, saying “There were farmers, there were B&B owners, people involved in the tourism business; Mount Leinster of course is very well known for recreation so people para-glide and hand-glide off it so we had people from those kinds of recreational areas, there were mountain bikers, people who walk and everybody very concerned that these giant turbines would be in the landscape and in the grounds that they would be walking in and flying over”.
She adds “The photomontages that have been prepared by Coillte didn’t really give a good representation of what they see as their view when they look out the window or when they walk through the landscape, what they know to be the skyline of The Blackstairs and Mount Leinster is not adequately portrayed in the wide-angle lens views that are prepared by the developer so we’re not really getting as good a view as we should be of what the development will be like”.
Ms McCarthy also says “We’re just a lot of people in the community who have great concerns, we have 16 days left to make those concerns known to Carlow County Council, most people went away and were going to call-up or email or get in contact with their neighbours and friends and let them know that they had 16 days to put a letter of objection or a submission into the county council, that’s a very important thing to do, you can email it in or you can post it in and that’s the way to get your voice heard at the moment that’s the first step really in getting your voice heard at the moment and even in a pandemic you can contact your county council, Carlow County Council, ring them up and ask them how to do it, we’ve given some guidelines on the SaveMountLeinster.com website if people want to do that, but certainly get in contact with the planning department in the county council and that’s the means by which you have to contact and make your objections known”.
Meanwhile, residents in South Kilkenny have also been voicing their concerns on a similar plan for their area – more on that here
