13/08/2022
SAVING KILRANELAGH HILL
West Wicklow Wind Action Group
After more than two years, the fight to save Kilranelagh Hill from the destruction that would have resulted from the er****on of a windfarm there, by the global conglomerate ABO, is over. The proposal for the turbines was rejected first by Wicklow County Council and then by An Bord Pleanála, when ABO appealed the council’s decision. Since the deadline for ABO to challenge An Bord Pleanála in the courts has now passed, we can finally say that Kilranelagh has been saved.
The national and international archaeological treasure that is the Baltinglass Hillfort Complex, of which Kilranelagh is an essential part, will now be further protected too. It will be included in Wicklow County Council’s Red Zone, which covers most of the Wicklow Mountains, in the new county plan. It is unclear why an area of such importance, in terms of both heritage and environment, was excluded from the previous plan. The failure to recognise the significance of the hills around Baltinglass, as one of Ireland’s most important archaeological landscapes, resulted in the ABO planning application to erect wind turbines on a site of extraordinary historical sensitivity, a site which is an integral part of a whole ancient landscape. We are grateful to Wicklow County Council for rectifying the situation, but there is a salutary warning. Without the relentless work of the local community in West Wicklow, in terms of time and energy and financial support over years, along with the commitment of many people outside the area and outside Ireland – from archaeologists and environmentalists to people who simply had a passionate love of Ireland – it is unlikely this battle would have been won.
Support for opposing the windfarm proposal came from many quarters, but always at the heart of it was the awareness of local people of the heritage that was under threat, a heritage that archaeologists have placed on a par with UNESCO World Heritage Sites across the globe. We have received support from many government bodies, ranging from the National Monuments Service to Bord Fáilte, but it has to be said that government itself, at national and local level, has been slow to respond to a situation that could easily have resulted in a decision of lasting detriment to the country and its unique historic and ecological heritage. Without the work of ordinary people, prepared to take on a global company with huge financial and legal resources, it is entirely possible that Kilranelagh Hill’s archaeological and environmental treasures would be under the bulldozer and the digger. An ancient landscape, barely touched over millennia, could have been destroyed overnight.
At all stages in the fight to save Kilranelagh Hill and the wider landscape of the Baltinglass Hills, campaigners have been aware of the need for the development of new energy resources, for reasons that everyone understands. But we have been disappointed to be met with approaches to planning that are cautious about asking important questions and reluctant to engage agendas that are untransparent in the short term and unclear in the long term. We have been disappointed that the survival of rural communities and the creation of rural jobs, whether in sustainable leisure and tourism, ecologically progressive agriculture, or small scale rural industry, figure not at all in agendas that impact both the rural economy and the stewardship of the countryside that will always depend on that economy. We have been disappointed that concerns about the transformation of some rural areas into energy-abusive commuter belts do almost nothing to stop this. We have been disappointed that plans to protect landscape and environment are much talked about and little acted on. We have been disappointed that large, international companies have access where the ordinary people of Ireland struggle to be heard.
Electricity must be generated in cleaner ways. No one disputes that. But can’t we do better than destroy parts of a heritage that makes Ireland special in the world? Better than ruin the ecology that this cleaner energy is meant to safeguard? Better than let a new industrial revolution, whatever its intentions, make the kind of mistakes we lament in earlier such revolutions? We need vision, not just decision.
All these issues may seem in a sense tangential to the aims that people in West Wicklow had when we began to gather together to question what was being proposed for the windfarm on Kilranelagh Hill. But as time passed, and the struggle dragged on, and became more and more demanding for so many, we met these wider issues at every turn. Often it felt as if our very right to ask questions about what was happening was in doubt. It wasn’t always easy to keep asking, but it became easier, eventually, as the weight of evidence against Kilranelagh as a site for wind turbines mounted. Yet we had to gather evidence with none of the resources that ABO had, especially on the legal front. And in that respect every single person who worked so hard to move the campaign forward contributed to the successful outcome. When the case is strong, ordinary people can take on global finance and make an impact on government policies which, however well-intentioned, may be open to narrow, ill-advised and unimaginative interpretation.
West Wicklow Wind Action Group thanks all who have contributed. It has been a true community effort. And it has been a long road. The outcome is not only important for West Wicklow, but for Ireland - and beyond. We hope that the issues we encountered along the way, linked to the heritage that is the inheritance of everyone on this island and to the stewardship of our rural environment that cannot be fully maintained without healthy rural communities, will gain prominence in a more visionary government approach to the future. We can’t know what the long-term future of clean energy is, but we cannot let urgency justify carelessness. We have a right to expect that environmental technologies show proper care for the environment whose interests they must serve. Ireland will not develop a truly green future without protecting a past that is also green, in every Irish sense of that word.
