Energy Infrastructure
Dail Éireann — 2025-12-09
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Aindrias Moynihan (FF), Cork North-West

Communities are concerned that biomethane development is going to happen in a disorderly way and that developers are going to walk over communities to make money. The communities need to know that the Minister of State has their back. Does the Government have the backs of the communities on this? They are worried. The Minister of State outlines where visual impact, land zoning plans, ecology and various other aspects are already covered in existing legislation and in existing policy documents. Yet, communities raise concerns about the absence of guidelines. Will there be guidelines that would be expected to cover site selection, the feedstock, the kind of feedstock and where it would come from, and the output material from the plants afterwards? Will applicants that are currently going through and going into planning applications be expected to meet any new guidelines or additional conditions that will be coming available later next year? Can the Minister of State outline those?
These are real concerns for so many communities. Reading through the Minister of State's response it sounds like he is depending very much on what is already there rather than bringing new guidelines to the table, if I am reading that correctly. This would be a concern for many people who feel that there are gaps in the process as it stands.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2025-12-09/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:26+00:00
Sitting date: 2025-12-09