Residents in the Derrybrien area of Co Galway, where there has been a major bogslide, have again appealed to the ESB to abandon its plans to build a €60m windfarm on a mountain overlooking the village.
At a meeting with company representatives last night, they also strongly criticised the ESB subsidiary Hibernian Wind Power, for failing to report a previous landslide which occurred on the site just over two months ago.
At an oftentimes heated three-hour meeting last night, the head of the company which is building the controversial wind farm, revealed that 450,000 cubic metres or 70 acres of bog had slipped down the mountainside.
Brian Ryan, General Manager of Hibernian Wind Power, also admitted that there had been an 80 metre bogslide six weeks previously and that this had not been reported to any official agency.
When strongly criticised for not informing the Health & Safety Authority of this first bogslide, he said the company did not realise the significance of it at the time.
Calls for project to be abandoned
Speaker after speaker urged the company to abandon the project and to accept full responsibility for what had happened.
Mr Ryan said he could not do this but he assured the local residents that the ESB was a large company which was not going to run away from its responsibilities.
Hibernian Wind Power also rejected suggestions that blasting carried out on the site had triggered the bogslide. It said it could take weeks to establish the cause of what had happened and in the meantime work would remain suspended.
