State body charged with protecting tourism made no submission on North Kerry windfarm plans from 2012-‘20
THE State body charged with protecting and promoting the nation’s tourism industry made not a single submission on any windfarm planning application in North Kerry between 2012 and 2019.
A reply to a Freedom of Information (FOI) request has revealed that Fáilte Ireland made no submission on the 13 windfarm applications Kerry County Council sent the agency. It also did not make a submission on a 38 windfarm ESB developments in Grousemount An Bord Pleanála sent it. Authorities are legally obliged to send the agency all planning applications that might impact tourism, as it is a ‘statutory consultee’. The core of Fáilte Ireland’s mission is ‘to support the tourism industry and work to sustain Ireland as a high-quality and competitive tourism destination’, it says.
But its apparent lack of engagement with the development of renewables in a region desperately trying to boost its tourism industry and maximise its existing high-quality destinations like Ballybunion Golf Club, undermines its stated intent, at least in respect of North Kerry.
That’s according to former Chair of the North Kerry Tourism Forum and Listowel-based accountant John O’Sullivan, who has long-raised concerns over the impact of the proliferating wind-farms on the region’s efforts to grow tourism.
Mr O’Sullivan asked the agency in an FOI last month exactly how many windfarms in Kerry it was consulted on between 2012 and 2020; and how many submissions Fáilte Ireland made on the windfarms it was consulted on in the period.
“Fáilte Ireland’s reply last week annihilates any remaining delusions of north Kerry’s importance for tourism,” Mr O’Sullivan told The Kerryman.
“I assumed that North Kerry’s tourism potential from its beaches, natural unspoiled countryside, Wild Atlantic Way, world-famous festivals and Ballybunion Golf Club, just to mention a few, would be recognised by our state tourism agency and protected.”
Mr O’Sullivan pointed to the controversy involving a recent wind-farm development 2kms from Donald Trump’s newly-purchased golf resort in Doonbeg,.
Fáilte Ireland made a submission to the planning application process after Taoiseach Leo Varadkar conveyed Donald Trump’s concerns about the impact of the development on his new asset to the agency. The wind-farm was refused planning by Clare County Council a month later.
It emerged that the agency had already made a submission to a larger version of the same plan in 2013. A planning consultant tasked by Fáilte Ireland on the case warned the Council of the negative impact of the proliferating turbines on tourism projects such as the Wild Atlantic Way.
At least two of the plans sent to Fáilte Ireland by Kerry County Council involved wind-farms on the Wild Atlantic Way in North Kerry. But Mr O’Sullivan said he feels it is clear the agency has a much different approach to the route through North Kerry: “Fáilte Ireland confirms they made a submission in regard to none, not even those along the Wild Atlantic Way. At minimum, this raises the spectre of millions of Euros of taxpayers’ cash used to finance the development of the Wild Atlantic Way by Fáilte Ireland and the apparent reluctance by that same state agency to protect the same taxpayers’ investment. It is not good enough for a state agency to fold its arms and not take action just because an entire region is zoned as suitable for wind farms...particularly if that planning zoning is based on the infamously wrong Landscape Character Assessment.”