35. It seems hard to believe that multi-million Euro wind energy projects that would involve construction of massive under and over water infrastructure in sensitive and protected inshore areas have been allowed to progress without comprehensive Strategic Environmental Assessment? Is this really the case?

Yes. A Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) was undertaken pre-2010 when Ireland’s draft Offshore Renewable Energy Development Plan (OREDP 1) was published. However, while the plan was criticised for the acknowledged data and knowledge gaps, more critically, the Environmental Report of the SEA revealed that “a Parliamentary Statement, provided by Eamon Ryan, Minister of DCENR confirmed that the SEA should not influence or affect the processing of existing Foreshore Lease applications”.  This Parliamentary Statement resulted in legacy applications being excluded from SEA and instead being categorised as ‘already existing renewable infrastructure’. Clearly the projects in question were not already existing infrastructure.

The OREDP was to have been fully reviewed and a new SEA carried out in 2020, but this has not happened. So, amazingly, none of the currently proposed ORE applications have been subject to mandatory SEA.