Residents of the south Galway community of Derrybrien are due to meet European Commission officials in Brussels today to discuss their concerns over the wind farm in their area.
The Derrybrien Landslide Action Group lodged a complaint with the European Commission over the wind farm project last November, after last October's landslide closed local roads and polluted the Lough Cutra river system.
The cause of the slide has not yet been determined, but the residents believe the work on the wind farm project was to blame.
All work on the 60-megawatt wind farm has been suspended since the blanket bog and mud slid over two kilometres through Coillte afforestation. The project developer, the ESB subsidiary Hibernian Wind Energy, is expecting a report on the situation from Applied Ground Engineering Consultants within the next week to 10 days.
The company plans to discuss the report with local residents. A separate investigation was also commissioned by Galway County Council.
The Derrybrien residents believe that the developers did not comply with planning conditions attached to the project. A delegation told an Oireachtas committee last December that it had discovered a report from a county council planner which described the environmental impact assessment as inadequate and lacking a full geotechnical survey as required by EU directive.
The residents said the only element of geotechnical investigation available was an archaeology report, a survey for which had to be suspended because the ground in the area was found to be unstable.
The group said that it could find no aspect of the various planning permissions which gave the developers approval to create two quarries and blast the hillside. The group also said a cash payment or €100,000 bond which was due to be lodged with the county council had not been fulfilled before work started.
No one was injured in the initial slide at Derrybrien on October 16th last, which occurred in dry weather when some 70 contractors attached to the wind farm project, and to Coillte, were working on-site. The movement occurred a month after the landslide from Dooncarton mountain, north Mayo, which forced over 40 families to evacuate their homes in Pollathomas.