CONCRETE AND CLAY ISSUES HIGHLIGHTED AT INTERCONNECTOR HEARING

Michael Fisher

Persistent questioning of EirGrid representatives by Monaghan County Council staff at the oral hearing in Carrickmacross into the North/South interconnector led to the company making available more details about the extent of the construction work required.

The Council representatives probed EirGrid for answers on specific areas such as cultural heritage, geology, the disposal of soil and the effects of construction traffic at pylon sites. Senior planner Toirleach Gourley asked EirGrid to provide site specific details for tower construction. ESB international consultants told him their designs were not site specific but were based on their wide experience of constructing such infrastructure over forty years. Questions were raised about the exact amount of soil that was to be removed from the 134 tower sites in Monaghan (and a small section of Co. Cavan near Kingscourt). Mr Gourley questioned some of the figures that had been supplied by EirGrid in their drawings and this resulted in a new table being supplied to the hearing yesterday morning.

EirGrid senior engineer for Monaghan County Council John McKernan how they proposed to bring concrete lorries along public roads, some of them narrow, to construction sites, and how many loads would be involved at each site. The response given related to the four different types of towers that would be used, but only a handful of tower sites were mentioned in detail, including one where piling would be required for the foundation and more concrete would have to be used than at the intermediate towers…

Ahead of the oral hearing in the Nuremore Hotel, Carrickmacross on Monday: (L-R) Cllr Sean Gilliland, Dr David Tierney (ornithologist NPWS), Heather Humphreys T.D., Cliona O’Brien (Head of Ecological Assessment NPWS) and Cllr Aidan Campbell. Pic. Pat Byrne.