Sir, – I was dismayed to read in the informative report by Ian Curran (“Government agrees to offshore wind farm”, Business, December 24) that the Government has granted approval for the construction of a wind farm in Dublin Bay. I was also surprised at the timing of the announcement when most are busy with Christmas and less minded to notice. The turbines, up to 61 of them, are to be sited on the Kish Bank and, at a distance of 10km from the coast, will therefore be very visible, dwarfing the small, discreet lighthouse which is currently situated there. If anyone doubts the intrusiveness of close-to-shore wind farms near an urban setting, have a look at pictures of Crosby beach outside Liverpool to see the resultant hemmed-in effect.
I realise that climate change and the impact on the availability of international energy supplies of the war in Ukraine have made more urgent the need to increase sources of power from within this country. However, in the case of sites of exceptional natural beauty such as Dublin Bay, surely alternatives can be found at locations either further out to sea or of less visual significance. As well as its intrinsic beauty, the bay is celebrated in literature and, as part of the country’s cultural heritage, should be protected from intrusive development. Joyce’s Stephen Dedalus will not be walking into eternity along Sandymount Strand with a thicket of blades fencing in the horizon between Howth and Bray. The journalist Simon Jenkins has written of the British government’s indiscriminate placing of wind farms as showing a visual insensitivity to landscape. With its heritage so closely implicated in the land and the sea, I would hope that Ireland would not follow the same course. – Yours, etc,
PAUL O’HANRAHAN,
Dún Laoghaire,
Co Dublin.