Mayo renewable energy startup Solar MarineEnergy is making plans to build Ireland’s first floating solar energy plant which it proposes to locate in Cork harbour.

A planning expert has accused the Department of the Environment of reverting to the ‘shoe-box’ apartment size guidelines of the 1990s and said the current floor area requirements will impact the most vulnerable in society.

THE PRODUCT of two years’ work and an integral part of the new County Development Plan, the much-awaited Rural Design Guide, by Cork County Council, is due for release in the first week of January 2004.