The elected members of Mayo County Council welcomed the new Draft Renewable Energy Strategy this week, but they acknowledged that a lot of work still has to be done to ensure that Mayo is at the forefront of industry.
The elected members were given a presentation on the strategy by senior planner for Mayo County Council, Ian Douglas, which was warmly received by the members. However county manager Peter Hynes told the meeting, “Don’t let anybody underestimate the amount of work that has to be done on this. We can do nothing until we get our own house in order and this is the first step. It will be several years before we will see these plans come into effect”.
“This is an excellent start for us and I want to compliment the staff who were involved in producing this,” said Cllr Michelle Mulherin, who was deeply involved with the plan. Cllr Mulherin proposed that the plan to go to public consultation. “We have to make sure that this goes out to the different areas and the people get involved in the plan so they can see what is proposed,” she added.
Westport based Cllr Peter Flynn said that this plan was the future of the county. “This is the future for Mayo, this is probably the most important document that this council has produced,” he said. Fianna Fáil councillor Mícheál McNamara proposed that public meetings be held so that the public at large could come along and see what the plan entailed. His idea was backed by Sinn Féin councillor Rose Conway Walsh who told the meeting, “We must have public meetings, so the public can know exactly what is in the plan, because this initiative will survive or fail on the public consultation”.
Independent councillor Frank Durcan said that while he was thoroughly behind this plan, unfortunately it isn’t practical at the moment because the required infrastructure of a 400kV line has not been put into the county by Eirgrid. “I’d love to see this happen but it won’t until those in Dublin get off their backsides and say that this will be done,” he said.
Fellow Independent councillor Michael Holmes also pointed out that “there are other stumbling blocks such as all the different designations of areas of conservation, the county is destroyed with them.”
