Permission for a wind farm with 27 turbines on a 112-hectare site in Co Wexford has been upheld by An Bord Pleanála.
The development, near Kilmore Quay, will have an "overwhelming" visual impact on the immediate vicinity, according to the board inspector who examined the project. Overall, however, he considered the site to be one of the better locations for a wind farm in Wexford.
Each turbine will have a 60-metre tower, with blade tips reaching a maximum height of 90 metres. A new 38Kv power line using double wooden poles along a railway line is also to be constructed.
The developer, Wexford Renewable Energy, is owned by Eirtricity, which is planning to build one of the world's largest wind farms off the Co Wicklow coast.
Permission for the Kilmore Quay development, which is to have an output of 20 megawatts, was granted by Wexford County Council in March last year.
Mr Jim Hurley, an environmentalist from Grange, Kilmore, appealed the council's decision on the grounds that the site was in an important bird area (IBA) and would be a threat to birds.
The site, he said, was a "hard weather refuge" for birds moving ahead of cold weather and a resting/feeding staging post for migratory species moving along a route known as the eastern Atlantic flyway. Such refuges in Ireland were important for bird survival.
There were no other appeals against the council's decision, but the project was supported by a number of local residents and organisations including the Irish Farmers' Association and Wexford Organisation for Rural Development. Birdwatch Ireland asked for conditions to reduce the risk of swans colliding with the turbines.
The Bord Pleanála inspector, Mr Öznur Yücel-Finn, said visual impact was one of the most important aspects to be considered in wind farm developments. "Indeed, in a county like Wexford where the land is rather flat, the high towers of the turbines and the rotating blades are readily visible from a wider area," he said. The visual impact would be "overwhelming" in the immediate vicinity, but there was very little development in the area, and local farmers supported the proposal.
The importance of south Wexford for wintering wildfowl was agreed by all parties.
However, the inspector said, while the concerns of the appellant were "quite reasonable", the decision on whether a habitat should be restored to its previous state was a matter for Dúchas, the Heritage Service. The developer had proposed to manage a nearby site to make it suitable as a habitat for the same species, and this was considered acceptable by Dúchas.
He had some reservations about the arrangement but believed the benefits of the development outweighed the costs to the environment.
