I rise to speak about a solar farm in Aglish in the Lee Valley in County Cork, very close to where I am from, which has recently been granted planning permission. This was a decision for a 161 ha solar farm. There is massive local opposition. When this went to Cork County Council last year, it received 200 objections from local people who felt it was not a suitable location. It was refused by Cork County Council on archaeological grounds and also because the council felt that it contravened the county development plan. In its refusal, the council stated that the development was contrary to proper planning and sustainable development of the area. When this was subsequently appealed to An Coimisiún Pleanála, the decision was taken just this week to overturn the ruling of Cork County Council and to grant planning permission on the basis of the climate action plan.

I am in favour of solar farms, but they need to be in the correct areas. We do have an energy crisis, and we have to mindful of that energy crisis and we need to do everything we can to resolve it, but what we are doing by letting solar farms spring up all over the country in an unplanned manner without proper regulation, and on a piecemeal basis whereby each local authority decides whether or not it is line with their county development plan, is quite simply not fair. The only way that we can progress proper energy development, particularly when it comes to renewables, is if we work with and not against our rural communities, and that is not what we are seeing at the moment. We need to introduce proper planning guidelines for solar developments, and we do not have that at the moment. We need to look at grading land. In comparison with Ireland, Germany, Italy and France have systems in place whereby it is not preferential to use good agricultural lands for solar farm development. I appreciate that we have to have great access and not everywhere is accessible on the grid, but the grid needs to be expanded. There is no other way we can deal with this crisis, and we need to be a lot more effective and efficient in our use and development of solar farms. The way they are springing up in an unregulated manner and local authorities are being stood on cannot continue. We need to see guidelines published.