Eirgrid met council planners last week
Council question Eirgrid on planning compliance on pylon project
“It's one of a series of meeting,” informed Director of Service, Brendan Jennings, after revealing that planners from three local authorities - Cavan, Monaghan and Meath - had met yet again with officials from Eirgrid and ESB Networks to address issues around the development of the proposed North South Interconnector. The most recent meeting took place only last week, on April 8, following on from a previous meeting in mid-February.
Again, Mr Jennings stated that the crux of any discussions that took place focused on the “discharge of planning conditions” by Eirgrid, and any role ESB Networks may have in that process.
The February meeting with council planners ended with the local authority representatives posing a number of questions with respect to issues of “compliance”.
Kingscourt Councillor Clifford Kelly (FF) had asked for an “update” at the April monthly meeting of elected members, which took place last Monday afternoon, April 14.
Cllr Kelly specifically asked how the councils are going to deal with permissions for entrances “not included on the original planning permissions”. He asked if those conditions would be “ignored” in cases where Eirgrid intends to use wayleave notices to gain access to land.
He added that he didn't think there would be “much co-operation” provided by members of the local farming community affected.
Independent Ireland's Shane P. O'Reilly meanwhile questioned if new laws are being drawn up to allow the ESB greater control over private lands with electricity lines as a response to the mass outages caused by Storm Éowyn and could that aid the delivery of the interconnector project.
His worry was that such a legislative change would “circumvent” any challenge at local level by elected members. “It sounds like it's being done as a thing by people who know better than the people who are elected by the people.”
Mr Jennings said he was unaware of the law change but if there was such an occurrence it would be “out of the hands of the planning authority”.
“I understand your concerns,” said Mr Jennings to the points raised by Cllr O'Reilly.