A community group in Co Roscommon has said it has serious concerns about a planned wind farm in their locality and believes planning applications for wind farms should be paused until national guidelines are updated.
Ballyfeeny Green Energy is proposing a wind energy project featuring up to six turbines on a site in the townlands of Tully and Ballyfeeny in the north of the county.
The company is owned and managed by an Irish renewable energy company called Greensource, which is based in Co Limerick
The proposed overall height of the turbines is expected to be around 160m.
The designed lifetime of an onshore wind farm is expected to be 35 years.
The company said the project will reduce carbon emissions from more than 15,000 households each year, the equivalent of 20,000 tonnes of carbon emission reduction per year.
However, Secretary of Ballyfeeny Action Group Rory Doyle said it still has several concerns, including noise pollution and the visual impact in the area.
"The concerns that the committee have are mostly centered around the impact on the visual amenity, the nature of the area and the character of the area," he said.
The group said that guidelines around windfarms need reform and has called on applications for wind farms to be paused until that happens.
Last year, the Government promised that new planning guidelines for wind farms would be introduced by the end of the year, but that has not happened.
Guidelines pertaining to wind farm energy date back to 2006, pending finalisation of an ongoing review.
"This is something we have called on from the start. Our local councillors have been involved in getting that motion before the council.
"Unfortunately, there was a determination by the Executive of the council that that would outside the scope of their powers and so the council has, as many other councils across the country have, now written to the Minister in order to request that he put in place a national pause," Mr Doyle said.
In its planning application, Ballyfeeny Green Energy said that onshore wind energy is of crucial importance to the decarbonisation of Irish society.
It said the aim to have a significant portion of Ireland's renewable electricity generated by wind and achieving the wind energy target is crucial for the country to achieve 80% renewable electricity, in turn, reducing dependency on fossil fuels.
"It is submitted that in order to achieve these aims, it is clear that suitable sites for wind farm development must be developed to cater for the energy needs of local communities where possible," the application stated.
The action group is holding a public meeting tonight to update locals on the application.
"We need to draw a distinction between what is proposed in Ballyfeeny and another windfarm that's already in the area," said Mr Doyle.
"In that development, the turbines were quite a deal smaller than the ones being proposed for Ballyfeeny and they were also spaced further apart.
"So the noise issues in particular are something that going to be intensified by the nature of these turbines being much larger than what is in existence already," he added.
Ballyfeeny Green Energy has said that it will ensure the project is constructed and operated to minimise sound.
Wind Energy Ireland has said that Irish electricity consumers need to be protected and "onshore wind energy is Ireland's most affordable source of new electricity".
"The more wind energy that we can develop, the less we rely on imported fossils fuels, and the better protected Irish families and businesses are from a volatile fossil fuel market," a spokesperson said.
Roscommon County Council is due to make a planning decision on the application by December.
