EirGrid has moved to assure residents of an East Cork village that a planned extension to an ESB substation in their area will only mean two more pylons at the site, as three existing pylons are to be dismantled.

A village in East Cork is calling for rigorous noise and environmental studies to be carried out if the ESB is to extend its local substation — a project reportedly vital to the modernisation of the electricity grid.

A village in East Cork has raised a raft of objections to plans by Eirgrid to extend an ESB substation in their community as part of the overall upgrading of the national electricity grid.

Up to 170 people attended a meeting in an East Cork village as opposition mounts in the south of the country to Eirgrid’s proposed €500m overhead powerline.

A community group in north Cork has criticised Eirgrid’s public consultation process around the €500m pylon project from Cork to Wexford to Kildare as “just being about ticking boxes for the planning process”.