Generating electricity and business - North-South interconnector

AN Bord Pleanála’s approval of the construction of the southern section of the North-South electricity interconnector will heighten the controversy surrounding what is likely to be the biggest infrastructural project in the history of the State.

Business groups say the project is essential for the country to sustain economic growth and to improve the resilience of our electricity grid. They say that, at present, the reliance on a single interconnection between North and South that is subject to constant outages poses risks to businesses.

According to Chambers Ireland, the interconnector will benefit the island as a whole and could lead to cheaper electricity for businesses and householders. Businesses in the North are just as enthusiastic.

However, construction will not be able to start until the end of 2017, at the earliest. The project has been in the planning process since 2009 and an inquiry is to be held in Northern Ireland in February, with an outcome not expected until later in the year.

At the same time, the project has the potential to develop into a new Shell-to-Sea controversy. That campaign, against Shell’s inland refinery and high-pressure pipeline, near Rossport, in Co Mayo, alienated communities and pitted local landowners and their supporters against the gardaí, when protesters sought to block construction.

Already, communities along the North-South route have said they will not allow the construction of pylons on their land, despite the planning decision.

They continue to insist that the alternative, placing cables underground, is practical, feasible, and affordable and should be pursued.

They have a point. Indeed, the most recent example of going underground is the East-West Interconnector, between here and the UK. While most of the cable crosses the Irish Sea and is, therefore, underwater, 75 kilometres of it is underground.

The anti-pylon campaigners want the new interconnector to be entirely underground. But why not some compromise and a bit of lateral thinking?

Just because planning is now in place (at least in the South) for a fully overground project, it might still be possible to put some of the cable underground, or even underwater, just off the coast from Dublin to Dundalk and onward to the North.

Even if it is to be entirely overground, there is no reason why the pylons have to be so hideous and menacing. Other major infrastructures, like bridges and roads, can be functional and ugly, but they can also be beautiful and can enhance, rather than blot, the landscape.

The Per Cent for Art scheme, a government initiative introduced in 1978, could be tweaked. It allows for 1% of the cost of any publicly funded capital, infrastructural development to be allocated to a work of art.

The electricity pylons themselves could be made into works of art and things of beauty, shaped like trees or Eiffel towers, into awesome edifices.

All it would take is a little imagination.