EIRGRID AND the ESB are hoping a set of proposals will resolve the standoff with jailed Co Offaly woman Teresa Treacy.
Ms Treacy (65), Woodfield House, Clonmore, Tullamore, was jailed on September 13th after repeatedly defying a court order permitting workers to remove trees and build a power line through her land.
Protesters have erected a number of tents and huts on Ms Treacy’s land in the last six days. The demonstrators claim to have Ms Treacy’s permission to occupy the site.
Meanwhile, the ESB and EirGrid have begun talks with Ms Treacy’s family and are hopeful of a face-to-face meeting with the Offaly woman.
Under the proposals, Eirgrid’s regional manager Deborah Meghan said the normal corridor through the forest for such a project would be reduced from 60 to 30 metres in width.
The plans also reroute a part of the line into a neighbouring farm in order to reduce tree-cutting at the north of the site.
“Between those two elements we are reducing the cutting by nearly 50 per cent, so in terms of scale, we are cutting I suppose about 5 per cent of the plantation,” Ms Meghan said.
She said there was a third element to the proposals, involving the planting of “a selection of natural low-growing Irish species, dogwood, blackthorn, that we could actually grow in the corridor that we have cut”.
The proposals have received a positive response from Ms Treacy’s family, according to Ms Meghan.
“We would love an opportunity to go in and put this proposal to her directly and work with her because she’s the expert in this,” Ms Meghan added. “She loves the trees, she knows about the environment and I think she could add huge benefit.”
EirGrid spokesman Michael Kelly expressed regret at the imprisoning of Ms Treacy.
“We very much respect Teresa’s position and the dignity and the principle with which she has approached all of the issues.
“We very much, both ESB and EirGrid, regret that this situation has been reached.”
Mr Kelly said trees would have had to be removed from the land had the cables been placed underground, in order to facilitate construction and maintenance.
Socialist United Left Alliance TD Joe Higgins,visiting the site yesterday, called on the ESB to withdraw the court order and examine the possibility of routing the cables underground.
“It shows just how quickly the law can crunch into a ruthless mode when the establishment interests are threatened,” he said.
“The ESB should now withdraw this injunction, release her immediately and conduct meaningful negotiations about an alternative, which is undergrounding the cable,” Mr Higgins added.
According to Cormac Lally of the Teresa Treacy Support Group, people are “outraged” at her imprisonment.
“It’s a dream that an awful lot of people would share in this country, just to be left alone in their autumn years to wander your land and enjoy the nature and wildlife that’s around you,” he said.
“The ESB have bullied their way in here and put a woman in jail who came back to them with a decent counter-offer to run the cables, if they had to run the cables through her land, that she would forgo the compensation and allow the cables to cross her land,” Mr Lally added. “The only stipulation was that the cables be undergrounded.”
Referring to people he believes should be in jail, he said: “There just seems to be an extreme unwillingness to prosecute or even investigate the people who brought the country to its knees and who generations in this land are going to have to pay for the gambling of these people.”
Meanwhile, the Irish Farmers Association has criticised the “breakdown in communication” between the ESB, EirGrid and Ms Treacy.
“There was a failure to recognise the particular circumstances of this landowner,” it said in a statement.
“The construction of power lines is flexible, unlike road or rail building, and it is essential that the needs of the landowners are understood,” it added.