North-South Interconnector
Dail Éireann — 2021-03-10
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Matt Carthy (SF), Cavan-Monaghan

Does the Minister wonder why it is 18 years later and there has not been a single move to erect a single pylon in the intervening period? It is because, crucially, in all the objectives and all the parameters EirGrid set itself, it is missing a crucial component that is at the heart of projects such as the ALEGrO interconnector, a very similar project happening between Belgium and Germany, which has one fundamental difference: it is being undergrounded. The reason it is being undergrounded is that the objective I talk about is the objective of public acceptance. That is a criterion that EirGrid has never taken into consideration. If the Minister wants, as I do, to see this interconnector developed, he will need to talk to the campaigning communities. I ask him again today: will he engage with those communities? Will he speak to them to hear their concerns? Will he actually engage with EirGrid, not to take its word verbatim as gospel, as he and successive Ministers in his position have been doing, but to engage critically with it to ensure we can deliver this infrastructure through underground technology? It is the only way that the project will be delivered.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2021-03-10/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:49:08+00:00
Sitting date: 2021-03-10