Recent proposals to develop and increase the use of pylons across Ireland has angered people. However, it is human health and possible long-term implications for children that cause most concern and confusion, writes Valerie Robinson
THE pylons row rages in Ireland and is evidence, once again, that governments and 'big business' underestimate the passion people have for the places they live in.
Just like the anti-fracking campaign that has gripped communities on both sides of the border, eirGrid's proposal to use 1,300 pylons up to 45 metres high to run 400,000-volt electrical cables across the island has galvanised people.
More than half of Ireland's counties have been earmarked as locations for the pylons as part of plans for a E 3.2 billion upgrade on the electrical grid by 2025.
The Grid West project would result in 300 pylons erected across counties Leitrim, Sligo, Roscommon, Galway and Mayo.
It is proving to be the least controversial of the three eirGrid projects.
Counties Cork, Limerick, Waterford, Wexford, Tipperary, kilkenny, Laois, Carlow, Wicklow, kildare and dublin have been earmarked for 750 pylons under the Grid Link project.
The north South Interconnector would see 410 pylons put in place in Meath, Cavan, Monaghan, Armagh and Tyrone. Emotions are running so high that eirGrid received 35,000 submissions during a recent consultation period.
Joe McCool is an engineer who lives and works near Benburb, dungannon, Co Tyrone. He is also a member of Safe energy for Armagh/Tyrone (Seat), one of many groups set up to oppose the use of overhead cables.
At the heart of the debate is the fear that pylons can negatively impact the environment and people's health but it is more than that. "It is absolutely essential to understand that just like Seamus Heaney said, northerners and rural people have a very strong sense of place," according to Mr McCool. "We live in a very scenic rural area, near Benburb village, which is renowned for its beauty. The authorities have no sense of the strength of feeling on the ground." Just as people living close to the Galtee and knockmealdown Mountains in Munster have major concerns about the visual impact of massive pylons, many rural dwellers in the north dread looking out their window and seeing a mass of metal on a beloved spot. "We've seen them along the [Belfast-dublin] motorway.
These monstrous pylons that are abhorrent," Mr McCool said, adding that eirGird needed to "go back to the drawing board" and devise a cost-effective underground alternative.
The North East Pylon Pressure (NEPP) group, which has been battling the cross-border project since 2008, has claimed that 97 per cent of landowners along the proposed route favour underground cables.
They have warned that properties within 100 metres of power lines face being devalued by up to 40 per cent.
However, it is concerns about human health and the possible
long-term implications for children that cause most concern and confusion.
A public meeting in Trim, Co Meath, this week heard that high-voltage over-ground cables were linked "without a doubt" to leukaemia in adults and children as well as brain tumours.
Retired Bristol University professor Denis Henshaw, an expert on the effects of radiation on humans, also suggested there was "very strong evidence" that they could increase the risk of Alzheimer's disease and miscarriage.
He said that UK research had found that the higher cost of putting the cables underground would help save on health spending into the future.
Public confusion and distrust on the issue has been compounded by the inability of science to definitively state whether or not pylons affect health.
In 2005 an Oxford University team published research that found children who lived within 200 metres of high-voltage lines from birth were 70 per cent more likely to suffer from leukaemia than those whose homes were at least 600 metres away.
On foot of the findings, the UK charity Children with Leukaemia called for planning controls to ensure houses and schools were not built close to high-voltage overhead lines.
However, Oxford University researchers last month published a study which found that such lines posed no cancer risks to children.
Scientists said they found no evidence that children born after the 1980s, whose mothers lived within a kilometre of power lines, had a greater than average risk of developing the disease.
They suggested the 2005 finding could be explained by changes in the characteristics of people living near power lines, pure chance, or problems with the study design.
The european Commission has said that more research is needed into the potential health risks. It recently published details of a review of around 500 scientific reports and studies on electromagnetic fields relating to power lines, electrical appliances and mobile phones. Described as a "preliminary opinion", researchers failed to find conclusive links between electromagnetic fields and Alzheimer's, dementia, Parkinson's disease or childhood leukaemia.
Interested parties are now invited to submit their comments on the report to the commission's Scientific Committee on emerging and newly Identified Health Risks by April 16.
A public hearing is also set to take place on March 27 in Athens.
The Irish government has appointed retired Supreme Court judge Catherine McGuinness to lead a review of studies into the Munster and west of Ireland pylon projects but it seems unlikely that the cross-border project will be included in her work.
The Republic's energy minister, Pat Rabbitte, has claimed that putting the cables underground would result in higher energy bills for householder for the next 50 years.
Taoiseach Enda Kenny sparked a storm of protest when he suggested that even more people would have to emigrate if the pylon projects did not go ahead. He later backtracked, saying he was getting conflicting advice from experts.
Meanwhile, Joe McCool warned that campaigners were "determined that pylons will not go up" as part of the north South Interconnector.
And he urged politicians and energy chiefs to adopt a new approach, re-educating the construction industry and the public about smarter energy consumption in the future rather than using pylons as a quick-fix. "The energy industry is a big bucks industry but ordinary people will not be bulldozed," he said.