Report on Eirgrid’s Consultation with Communities Must Result in Significant Changes – IFA

IFA Environment and Rural Affairs Chairman Harold Kingston has described the findings of a recent report, which reviewed EirGrid’s community consultation process, as confirmation that EirGrid has not listened to or genuinely engaged with key stakeholders such as farmers and rural communities.

He said “IFA has always tried to engage constructively with infrastructure developments. However, it is difficult to see how EirGrid can retrospectively impose a new consultation on the thousands of families in the catchments of the North South project in the north east, the Grid Link project and the Grid West project and expect communities to trust them. IFA will robustly represent the interest of farm families in any new consultations with EirGrid”.

Harold Kingston said, “If EirGrid is to regain the confidence of rural communities, they will have to pursue an alternative strategy, which replicates the eight decades of community engagement carried out by ESB when delivering electricity infrastructure in this country”.