Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Ms Lo): I welcome Dr Dan Kane, Mrs Dorothy Kane, Mr Owen McMullan, Professor Alun Evans and Mr Val Martin to the table. We have papers from their organisation, Windwatch. Thank you very much for coming all this way to us. It is good to see you all again. As you know, we produced the inquiry report, and we received responses from the Department. We really want to know your views on the Department's responses. Hopefully, we will bring departmental officials back next week or the following week about your responses to the Department's comments. Please proceed to give us your comments.

Dr Dan Kane (Windwatch): Thanks, Madam Chairman. It is good to see you all again. There is a lot going on in the environmental front at the moment. Obviously, we are pressed for time because we have had a number of planning appeals, so we were not able to do a detailed written response. We want to start, as we did last time, by talking about the legal framework within which all this operates. Therefore, I ask Mr Val Martin to address the Committee.

Mr Val Martin (Windwatch): Thank you very much, Madam Chairman, for inviting me up here. I am from Kingscourt in Cavan. I am the Irish spokesman for the European Platform Against Windfarms (EPAW) and a group called the Environmental Action Alliance-Ireland (EAA-I), which is more to do with ensuring proper compliance with planning generally. I am not quite as authoritative as my good friend Mr Pat Swords, but I will give you a little information. I intend to cover only two sections. I am acutely aware of the time frame and restrictions, so I will watch that as best I can. I do not want to go on too long. One section is a brief outline of the legal requirements that we believe are there, and the second is a little bit about the actual technical constraints and limitations, which many people may not know about. After that, you can interrupt me or tell me that there is only a minute to go because timing is always a factor in these things.

The first thing to tell you is that the authoritative bodies in this area are the United Nations, the European Union, the United Kingdom Government and the devolved Government in Northern Ireland. The Southern Government are a little involved in that we are neighbours, and we have certain things in common. The renewable energy plan for the UK comes from the Climate Change Act 2008 and EU directive 2009/28/EC. That is all very fine. They are plans or programmes — probably plans. They are not policies. A plan or programme is when you implement it and provide financial assistance or whatever it may be.

The first law I would ask you to look at or examine is strategic environmental directive 2001/42/EC. That is broadly an EU directive — EU law — where, conceded in certain areas, is binding in the United Kingdom, which includes Northern Ireland, and all over the member states, insofar as it applies to a particular area. The EU strategic environmental directive stipulates that all plans and programmes that are likely to have a significant impact on the environment or that transcend national boundaries must be made the subject of a strategic environmental assessment (SEA). There is actually no SEA for Europe's renewable plan. No SEA was carried out for the directive that was issued in 2009 at EU level.

It also stipulates that there must be an SEA at the level of the competent authority where it is implemented. In other words, if it is a public plan or programme, I insist — sorry, I repeat: the difference between the SEA and the environmental impact assessment (EIA), which is the local planning assessment, is that the SEA applies to public plans and programmes. These are all public plans and programmes.

The 'National Renewable Energy Action Plan' of the Republic of Ireland — the UK also has one — has not been subject to any strategic environmental assessment. What is essential in that is that energy is named in it. That assessment must consider alternatives, and, to do that, it must state what it is being done for, what it is intended to achieve, and it must show the alternatives. The whole idea is to stop environmental interference without a good, proper common-sense look at it to see where you will be when you get to the end. Key to that is exactly what wind energy does. That has been bypassed, and my association is now moving away from informing and the media end of things and asking people to comply. We are looking very closely at getting this before a judge. EU law differs slightly from ordinary law in a local country in that the directive has a preamble, and it is very well written, so you do not have to interpret. The purposeful approach is the proper one taken by a court, so we are working on that.

The Aarhus convention, as Pat Swords outlined here previously, has three pillars: public participation —

The Chairperson (Ms Lo): I am sorry to interrupt you. I think that we have looked at all that before. We are quite limited for time. I really want to hear your comments on the responses from the Department. To us, they seem to be pretty vague. I want to hear what you think about the Department's responses.

Mr Martin: My response, in the absence of a proper assessment of what is happening, is what I have stated here is a prerequisite to a planning application. You cannot go for a planning application without having each step completed in the same way as, if you wanted to have a dance licence, you would need to have a fire officer's report before the court. A court will not entertain it without a fire officer's report. If people pay a mortgage on their house until they are my age, and they come home one day and find strangers in the house and cannot get redress for it, everything that follows causes all kinds of problems — why is the postman delivering post to them and all that.

If I can, I want to give you the constraints of wind energy. Is that all right, Madam Chairman? Can I do that?

The Chairperson (Ms Lo): Sorry?

Mr Martin: I want to talk about the limitations of wind energy and the constraints on it as a source of power. All the public bodies say that we have to reduce the importation of fossil fuel. We have to do all these things, but let us have a very brief look at what wind energy does. First, wind cannot be —

The Chairperson (Ms Lo): OK. I am sorry. The main responses from the Department — I have lost my screen; the battery has gone — are, from memory: following the publication of the strategic planning policy statement (SPPS), it will review the renewable energy policy. It will then look at some of our recommendations. It does not really pin down what it will be looking at. We asked the Department about a number of recommendations — for example, a review of ETSU-R-97. It says that it will not do that in a hurry. I think that that was one of your main concerns.

You were also concerned about separation distance, and I think that the Department said that it will not change the distance either. You had serious concerns about all those issues, and we included them in our recommendations. The Department seemed to be fairly lukewarm in committing to making changes. I want to hear about those things from you. We do not have to go back to examining all the law. We have all looked at that, and the Department is not keen to adhere or it has reasons outlining why it is adhering to all the EU directives.

Mr Martin: I will hand back to my colleagues now. This is what always happens. I am not being critical of the Chair, but the main point is that, until my group and I can bring a court to bear on the failure to comply with the basic assessment, which is common sense, you will have all the leaves and branches of the tree, and you will have lots of talk. You cannot get over the basic fact that the law is being broken on the central point that this has never been assessed. No one has a clue why they are doing it. The public participation aspect is designed so that anybody can say, "You are making a mistake. Check that for me, please, and get back to me". You cannot do that. I have been putting these questions for years, and there is no way that you can get anyone to deal with the actual savings in CO2. I maintain that, when all is done, a system with wind energy is inferior. It possibly uses as much if not more fuel than one with none.

With the setback distance and what that is like in the South, I will give you an example of how it affects me. The distance in the Republic is 500 metres from any turbine, irrespective of its height. I have a site for my children on which I have planning permission, should I want to build a house. It is 600 metres, but, if it is extended to 700 metres in the Republic, the wind energy company will be able to object to my building there, so the extension of the distance militates against my interests. Bear in mind that we are there 200 years and are not against the wind company. That is what happens when you do not assess the basic thing.

You do not want me to deal with the technical aspects of wind, do you?

The Chairperson (Ms Lo): No. One of the recommendations was about the connection to the grid. You also raised the point that it should be a parallel process rather than going for planning permission first and then applying to go on the grid, only for people to find that it is too expensive to connect.

Mr Martin: I have a wee bit of peculiar knowledge about that. Assuming we forget about the SEA directive, the next thing you get to is the EIA directive, which is law that is applied in Northern Ireland. That goes back to the 1985 and 1997 directives, and there are several other ones. The European Court of Justice ruled that schedule 6 of the 2001 regulations in the South are not adequate because they exclude certain things, including the demolition of buildings. I am not too sure about the situation in Northern Ireland, but what is for sure is that a group in Cork took a High Court case in Dublin, and it said that the EIA directive states clearly that the cumulative effects of the entire project must be assessed. Mr Justice Peart looked at it, and he asked the other party, "How can I exclude the connecting cables? Isn't that part of the whole thing?". There was a legal argument, and the question was asked, "Could the wind farm operate without the connecting cables?", and Mr Justice Peart's answer was "No". The planning authorities in the Republic now accept that.

That does not mean that you have to follow slavishly every little drain here and there, but it means that all the major parts of the planning programme must be part of the EIA. The jury is still out on what happens if an EIA has already been done and planning permission granted. Can you then do one for the wires only? The judge said, however, that you cannot frustrate the EIA directive by splitting it. It is the same with the North/South interconnector. In the Republic, an SEA is carried out, but it cannot be carried out on a subsection. You have to do it on the entire programme.

The Chairperson (Ms Lo): We also asked for a review of the distance for neighbour notification in wind turbine planning. In rural areas, there may not be residents in the immediate vicinity of a proposed wind turbine; if you apply the same distance for notification as in urban areas, you may miss some houses around the turbine. The turbine will still affect them, however. We recommended that the notification area be extended a bit in rural areas, and I think that that has been turned down by the Department.

The Committee Clerk: The Department said that it would look at it further. It would require policy development, public consultation and legislative change.

The Chairperson (Ms Lo): The Department is not doing it in the meantime. I think that we recommended that it be extended beyond the current 90-metre radius.

Mr Owen McMullan (Windwatch): Sorry, Chair, you are talking about a 90-metre radius. That actually refers to —

The Chairperson (Ms Lo): Can you speak up a bit? It is very noisy outside. It is hard to hear.

Mr Owen McMullan: The 90 metres refers to the neighbourhood notification.

The Chairperson (Ms Lo): This mic is only recording; it is not a loudspeaker. It is a big room, and we are recording this session for Hansard. You still need to speak louder.

Mr Owen McMullan: You mentioned 90 metres, which refers to neighbourhood notification. That is a complete mockery, because, in a lot of cases, the blades on the turbines are a lot longer than 90 metres. There are developers who are keen for so-called community benefits. One of the main companies, through its community engagement, invites community groups within 12 kilometres of the site to apply for community funding. Is that an admission by the developer that communities living within 12 kilometres are negatively impacted? It goes on to say that community groups within 3 kilometres of the perimeter of its wind farm will receive greater benefit. Does that not mean that neighbours within a 3-kilometre setback distance from the perimeter of a wind farm are even more negatively impacted? The 90 metres that you refer to is for neighbourhood notification.

The following is an example of an application that went through on 7 November 2012. The nearest resident was not informed. This is a neighbourhood report that was published, and a lot of the dates refer to people who wrote letters of objection. This neighbourhood report was produced, but the people who made the objections were notified after they had made the objections. It makes a mockery of the notification report.

Dr Kane: The existence of the 90 metres ensures that most people are not told of a proposal for a turbine or a wind farm near them. That cannot be right. It certainly suits the industry, and the planners do not intend, as far as I am aware, to change that. It is by accident that you find out whether you are going to have a turbine nearby. That is one aspect of separation distance.

You touched on the second aspect. There is confusion over the separation distances for single turbines and wind farms. The planners themselves are confused about this. Why, then, are there turbines as close as 100 metres to front doors in some cases, when, in other cases, it might be 500 metres for the same size of turbine? There are major issues there. The 500 metres, which is supposed to be the minimum separation distance, is not being applied. Lord Morrow, at the last meeting, made a comment about the Screggagh wind turbine collapse and said that it looked like an airplane crash. It certainly did. Unlike what you were told on the BBC, the debris travelled right across the main road and into the field on the other side — well over 300 metres. That is common.

Those sorts of accidents are not uncommon. In 2014, 28 blade failures were reported in the media. The industry has admitted — you can add to this figure considerably — that, in 2014, there were 3,800 wind turbine blade failures, brakes being thrown off and accidents. The number of fatalities has now risen to 160 that are known, but the industry is the only energy industry in the UK that has an agreement with its members that they will not publish any information about their accidents. Therefore, the fact that only 28 of 3,800 have been reported shows you how well they are succeeding. There are many thousands of accidents every year across the world, across the UK and in Northern Ireland.

Just to demonstrate how much that happens locally, we brought some photographs with us that are from County Antrim alone. It is only a selection, and there are many others. The Health and Safety Executive and the Health and Safety Authority are not collecting any information on accidents, and they are not being reported. How can you, therefore, as a legislative body, decide on what the separation distance should be to allow neighbours of a wind turbine to be safe? You cannot, because you are not being given the hard information that you need.

Mr A Maginness: What distance are you suggesting for neighbourhood notification? Do you have a view?

Mr Owen McMullan: You would like to think that it would be anywhere within a minimum of 2 kilometres from the perimeter.

Mr A Maginness: Over what time were the fatalities that have been mentioned? Were they confined to the UK, or were they throughout Europe?

Dr Kane: Those fatalities have been gleaned from newspapers and media across the world, so it is worldwide. We are not saying that it is a lot. We are saying that the total number is much greater than that, but all that is known so far is the type of accident that occurs. Most of the fatalities are caused by blade breakages and fires.

Mr A Maginness: Over what time period were the 160 fatalities?

Dr Kane: I think that it is from 2000 or thereabouts to date.

The Chairperson (Ms Lo): It is from 2000 to date, so that is 15 years. Did you say that they are not all reported because of some agreement and that people are not reporting? Did I pick you up right?

Dr Kane: Yes, I believe that the wind industry trade body has an agreement that it does not publish information. It has been approached by other groups to make its database available to the Health and Safety Executive, but, as far as I am aware, it has not done so.

Mr Martin: There were two notable fatalities in Holland last year, when two boys were repairing a turbine, which caught fire. They could not get off. One died up on top of the turbine, and the other jumped. It was very sad. You have to remember that you have a major industry away up in the air.

With regard to safe distances, the species of noise varies. I have spent a lot of time sitting at wind farms and listening to them, trying to do so objectively. One time, I brought a son of mine, who is not given to doing things that I want to do, with me. I asked him for his honest opinion, and he said that it was like having two washing machines in the bedroom, which is what a lot of people say. People get up in the middle of the night thinking that they have left the washing machine on. There is a cumulative effect.

I can hear the one in Mullingar at 2 kilometres away on a frosty night. On some nights, maybe like tonight, you would not hear much. Sometimes it is only maybe 400 metres. The generator makes a sort of a rasping noise that carries down through the ground and comes up through the pillow. It is actually a vibration, and that is what they call low-frequency noise.

You then have the whooshing of the blade. The blade makes a noise that helicopter designers have tried for a long time to get over. When the blade passes over the canopy of the helicopter, it creates a whooshing noise. You will even hear big helicopters make that noise. In military circles, that is what gives the game away, and that is why helicopters are not a very good or secretive way to approach. You can hear that noise long before you can hear the actual engine.

Dr Dan Kane: Madam Chairman, you mentioned the ETSU-R-97. As you said, we raised the unsuitability of that standard before. It is part of PPS 18, but I am sure that members are not really familiar with it. I was not familiar with it until turbines came near my home.

It is worth reading a couple of sentences from the introduction of ETSU. It tells you its status, which is opposed to the claims that it is government policy. It is not. If you do not mind, I will ask my wife to read those couple of sentences to you. One is the introductory caveat, and the other is a comment.

Mrs Dorothy Kane (Windwatch): It states:

The Chairperson (Ms Lo): That is not a microphone; it is just a recording device. You can speak to it, and it will record you, but it will not amplify your voice. You will have to raise your voice.

Mrs Dorothy Kane: Right. The introduction states:

Dr Dan Kane: And the other bit.

Mrs Dorothy Kane: The preface states:

Dr Dan Kane: The difficulty, Madam Chairman and members, is that it has been allowed to replace existing guidance. Therefore, it has replaced working legislation that has been used for many, many years for dealing with noise issues. When the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) was asked to provide the EU with the standard that should be used for the identification of noise complaints, it used BS4142, which is used by councils here. It did not use ETSU.

As you said, ETSU has been defended by the Department of the Environment. The difficulty with it is that it deals only with turbines up to a hub height of 32 metres. Most of the turbines that are constructed today are well above 32 metres, and it is therefore not relevant to them. What has happened is that the plaster approach of using the Institute of Acoustics' good practice guide has been used.

ETSU had no research basis. There was no research that other noise experts could refer to to see whether the conclusions of the ETSU standard were correct. In our response to you in February last, we made the same statement about the Institute of Acoustics' good practice guide, which is supposed to interpret ETSU. It similarly did not make its research available not only to the peer review panel but to most of the members who were involved in the writing of the good practice guide.

What has happened since is that experimental sites have been identified in England, such as Cotton Farm wind farm, where permanent monitoring equipment has been put in place. That has conclusively shown that the Institute of Acoustics' guidance does not actually help ETSU but makes it worse. It allows turbines to be closer to homes, and it allows the degree of noise to be greater. As we told you before, it also does not cover a whole series of different types of noise, from low-frequency noise and, in particular, amplitude modulation. There is a real difficulty there. The research is there, and it does not back up ETSU or the good practice guide in any way. That means that members of the public who live around turbines are going to be exposed by the turbines more and more.

One of the myths that you will have been told, no doubt, by the Northern Ireland Renewables Industry Group (NIRIG) and other green NGOs is that turbines today are quieter than they were. You are probably aware that Marshall Day Acoustics did a major report for the Republic of Ireland's Government for their review. Marshall Day Acoustics showed conclusively that, if you double the capacity of a wind turbine, for example from 1 MW to 2 MW, that does not just double the noise, it more than doubles it. So, the noise actually increases with the newer turbines. Worse than that, if you look at the graph of how that noise increases, you will see that the noise that you and I hear, which is the ordinary noise that the human ear picks up, increases at a certain rate. The low-frequency noise increases even faster. Therefore, the bigger and more modern the turbine, the more it produces low-frequency noise, which is not even being looked at as part of the standard.

The amount of medical research now on the impact of low-frequency noise on the human body is just staggering. Even this week before I came to you, four new papers with cutting-edge and peer-reviewed research from all over the world were brought to my attention. It cannot be maintained any longer that noise is not affecting the health of people working with or around and living near wind turbines. It is almost as close to a fact as you can get. I encourage the Committee, if it has the time, to look at the research being done by an Australian Senate Committee, which, as you are aware is investigating wind energy. It is extremely critical of the way that the industry has attempted to suppress the information about the health and other effects of low frequencies and other types of noise.

The standard that the Department is trying to defend here cannot be defended. That is why, as a stopgap, we suggested a minimum separation distance of 2 km. That is simply because we do not know the impact of all the noise. If 2 km turns out to be too much, you can always make it shorter later on. However, people will at least have a certain degree of protection in the meantime. There have been situations in Northern Ireland where houses have had to be evacuated because people can no longer survive the effects of the noise in their own home.

The Chairperson (Ms Lo): OK. Thank you very much, Dan. That is very useful.

Professor Alun Evans (Windwatch): I will move on to a few of the health aspects. Basically, it is amazing that ETSU is still on the statute books. It is not fit for purpose, and it is grossly inadequate to protect human health. As well as this meeting of the Committee, a couple of other momentous things are happening today. One is that the Conservative Government — I never thought that I would say that I was pleased to see them elected, but that is a post hoc issue — have announced their wind farm policy for onshore wind farms. They are devolving the planning responsibilities to the localities and are withdrawing the subsidies a year earlier. That is good. A lot of this was driven by the fact that they commissioned a report on health that was written by a colleague of mine and will be made public quite soon. I could tell you what is in that report. There is a lot of stuff on health that is not being adequately recognised. It is available, but it is not being disseminated. The protection given by a setback of 500 m, 700 m or 10 times the rotor diameter is woefully inadequate.

The problem is the low-frequency noise. I am rather upset that the Assembly has not done more. I get the impression that, at the same time as it is exporting industrial process to the quiet rural localities of the Province, it is importing noisy things into the city in the shape of the Belfast City Airport. The problems are exactly synonymous. It is producing problems in children. You may have noticed that there is an advertising campaign to ensure that young children get an adequate night's sleep. That is terribly important. Adequate sleep in children is important for laying down memory, and it is important for reducing obesity.

We heard about accidents. One thing that Val did not mention was that none of the wind turbines comes with a CE certificate. There is no safety certificate. The law in Europe is that any appliance should have a safety certificate. That has all been bypassed such is the rush, which is well-intentioned, to bring green power. There are lots of reasons why this is not green at all. It is inimical to human health. It is bad for communities. It is a disastrous policy. It is difficult to change, but I ask you to look at it.

The other big thing that is happening today is that the Pope has a new encyclical, which you will hear about later. He is calling for the end of human greed and the end of the exploitation of fossil fuels and so on. That is all very well, but I suspect that the end line will be something about more wind turbines, which would be a pity. We really need to reappraise the policy, and we need to protect public health —

The Chairperson (Ms Lo): OK. Thank you. We are quite pushed for time; we have to finish by 11.30 am.

Mr Owen McMullan: There are just a couple of things, Madam Chair, that we would like to —

The Chairperson (Ms Lo): I just want to say that the Department has agreed to further investigate the use of ETSU-R-97 as a guide. It said that it could be put into its review of the planning policy for renewable energy. We will certainly wait for it to look into that to see whether further research or a change of policy is required. We will keep an eye on that. At least it has committed to investigating that.

Dr Dan Kane: If there is any review of that type of standard — as I said, there is no requirement for it to be here in Northern Ireland — we strongly urge that an independent expert is brought in. Too many people in Northern Ireland have been complicit in the improper assessment of noise in the past. If there is going to be a clean sweep of any description, some sort of independence has to be brought in. That has not been available to date.

The Chairperson (Ms Lo): The last part of our inquiry was about community engagement. Are you content with the responses from the Department on our recommendations for the community engagement kit and register and all that?

Mr Owen McMullan: The information from developers on information nights is extremely vague. The less the communities know, the less firefighting the developers have to do.

Going back to the points on shadow flicker and low-frequency noise, when the strategic planning department recently presented to you, it was asked how it considers all applications for wind farms and wind turbines. It said that it consults with environmental health on impacts of infrasound and low-frequency noise. That is not the case at all. I have this in writing, because I actually went to environmental health; this is a serious admission. When strategic planning says that it consults with environmental health on shadow flicker and low-frequency noise, that is it done and dusted. When I went to environmental health — I have this signed and in writing — it said:

It also confirms:

Shadow flicker has been used as a form of torture. There are people living with the consequences of shadow flicker, which can cause health problems such as epilepsy and so on.

People are being subjected to the impacts of infrasound as we speak. There is no medical or scientific evidence to prove that current setback distances from wind turbines and wind farms to dwellings, schools, places of work or even public roads are safe.

I will just pass around some debris from the collapsed wind turbine at the wind farm in Screggagh that I collected from the main Fintona to Fivemiletown road. There is plenty more where that came from. This is a serious issue, and the Government's policy on renewable energy is being steamrolled through while offering no protection whatsoever for public health and safety. There is growing public concern, as was highlighted from the recent collapse of the wind turbine at the Screggagh wind farm near Fintona. The Government are failing in their duty of care to protect citizens and the environment.

That is clearly what is happening here today.

The Chairperson (Ms Lo): OK.

Mr McElduff: Chair, I have a question that is very relevant to what Owen just said. In the Department's response to the recommendation that we made on the Screggagh Windfarm incident, it said that DETI advised it that the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) had substantially completed its investigation into the collapse. Can Owen either confirm or deny his knowledge of the investigation? Did the Health and Safety Executive carry that out, or was it the wind company?

Mr Owen McMullan: We contacted the Health and Safety Executive on Saturday 3 January and brought the collapse to its attention. That was the first it had heard of it. We have had no correspondence from the Health and Safety Executive since. We were told that the developer and the manufacturer of the turbine, Nordex, was conducting its own inquiry. When we questioned people, they said that they thought it looked like a plane crash. In the case of a plane crash, the make and model of plane is automatically grounded until it is deemed safe, but the same make and model of turbine is being allowed to operate in different places across the country without checks being done.

To go back to your question, Barry, it was the manufacturer who did the report. HSE has said that it will do a report, but there is nothing in the public domain that I am aware of about its findings.

Mr McElduff: Chair, my point of view is that the Department of the Environment needs to satisfy itself that a DETI health and safety investigation in the event of a situation such as Screggagh is, in fact, that and is not simply an investigation by the wind industry itself. We will have the opportunity to put that point next week when the departmental officials come before us.

Mr Martin: Just briefly, Madam Chair, I want to explain that, on the response from the authorities that you asked me to comment on, there has been a wee mistake. Owen sent them an email, and I think that he may have it, but the one that I read was not the right one, so that has put me at a slight disadvantage. I have not been here before. I was just a wee bit weak on what they actually said. I am very sorry that I did not go through it properly and was not able to give you that response. I just wanted to explain that and apologise to you.

The real community gain here was supposed to be that we would have a cleaner, healthier environment and a better future for people. The idea that you have to give that industry money and other things is all very fine, but no other industry has to do that. The dairy industry, sports clubs or other things do not give neighbours money. People see through this. That is why my campaign is based on the idea that, if you are going to upset people in ways like this, you should show them that they would benefit.

During the war in Britain and everywhere, people did not mind not having no milk for their tea or whatever, because they were saying, "We will win". People do that, provided that they know that everyone is on the level. In what I have been doing — unfortunately, people do not like me for it — I have been pointing things out to people and saying, "You have got to show that this will work, boy; you have got to show that there will be something in the end". People will be upset it they put up with all this and then find that we are importing more fossil fuel than ever. It is just mined where I come from.

Mr Owen McMullan: I would just like to note that the Committee Deputy Chairperson is recorded in Hansard as saying that she would not like to live close to a wind turbine. Neither would I, and I am sure that many people out there would vouch for that as well.

It is interesting to note that, just recently, one of the directors of TCI Renewables objected to a wind turbine in his locality outside Whitehead. "Not in my back yard" is the definition of a Nimby. Well, "Next, It Might Be You", and more and more people are being affected by these things as we speak.

I will now go on to the cumulative impact. Last year, in a presentation to the Committee by the Department's strategic planning division, Deirdre McSorley said:

She also said:

Mr Kirk said during that presentation:

They are making up the rules as they go along. This should be based on a matter of assessment, with the conclusions drawn from established criteria. As you identified in your report, west Tyrone has already reached saturation point, yet we are faced weekly with more and more applications. A number of wind farms are still in the process, and a number have been approved but cannot be constructed because they have already reached saturation point. The System Operator for Northern Ireland (SONI) is looking at spending more money on infrastructure. The cost of that infrastructure is going to be passed on to the consumer. As we speak, 44% of homes in Northern Ireland are now in fuel poverty, so where is the benefit to the consumer? I looked at one of the recent questions asked in the Assembly and saw that, over the last five years up until the end of 2013, almost £260 million has been paid out in ROC payments. That money is coming from the kitty to Northern Ireland. The health service and the education service are being deprived of that money. It is £260 million, and the figure is growing on an annual basis.

The Chairperson (Ms Lo): No, that money comes from central government — from Westminster.

Mr Owen McMullan: Of course. Yes, it comes from Westminster, but it could be channelled in better ways to provide better healthcare and better education services.

The Chairperson (Ms Lo): The fact that the Government have announced that renewable obligations certificates (ROCs) will finish by the end of 2016 may have an impact on wind turbine or renewable energy development. That was announced this morning.

Dr Dan Kane: It is interesting that Denmark, the home of the wind turbine, has now stopped all onshore wind turbines because of the concerns about health and noise. The German Medical Association, which is what they call the German medical parliament, has written to its Government and said that it wants an end to all wind turbines on land. It is very concerned about the health impacts. The health impacts are indirect and are usually caused by sleeplessness, but it is the general view across the world now that wind turbines are too close to homes. Whether or not you agree with wind energy is something else, but if you have a cordon sanitaire around them, that should be considered.

It is impossible to divide this issue into neat little boxes. I realise that your remit is the environment. There are health impacts and economic aspects to this as well. It is all part of the one problem, and we ask that you take the opportunity on occasions to step back and ask yourselves this question: why we are doing this to ourselves in this way? Are we gaining the benefits that are claimed? For example, NIRIG sat in front of you in 2013. It would not meet us, if you remember, in Omagh, so it came to you in September. It said that 1,300 jobs were already provided through wind, but, when you went to meet it in 2013 at its annual conference, those 1,300 jobs had become 750 for all renewable sources. In actual fact, the research shows that somewhere around 70 permanent jobs have been created. In 2013, we paid out £82 million in ROCs. That is over £1 million a job.

The Chairperson (Ms Lo): Unfortunately, developers can claim that they can create so many jobs, but Planning Service has no means or does not have requirement to check after the development whether those jobs are still there or have ever been created. That is the problem.

Thank you very much for coming all this way. I really want to touch base with you after we have produced a report and got responses from the Department. It will be coming next week, and we certainly will put forward your comments to it. We hope to get some answers.

Mr Owen McMullan: Just before I go, Madam Chair, I would like to ask one question. I am mindful that you are meeting the Department next Thursday, and maybe there is one question that you could seek clarification on. In his presentation to the Committee on 4 December last, the Minister said:

I would seek clarification of that.

Mr Martin: You could ask this: is there something that we could do? There is a crisis coming in Northern Ireland generation with Ballylumford, Kilroot and Coolkeeragh and the large combustion directives. They are being put on short time, and it is getting quite acute now — I will not go into it here. However, it is something to bear in mind. Remember, wind is supposed to fill that vacuum, and it cannot do it.

Mr Owen McMullan: There will be blackouts.

Mr Martin: Only 50% of wind energy can ever be allowed into the system; it can never allow any more. [Inaudible.]

The Chairperson (Ms Lo): Sure. OK. Thank you very much.