AMASS

Yes: Plans for controversial Galway solar farm refused over ‘deficient and incomplete’ information independent.ie/county/galway…

Omnes Capital and their Irish sock puppet @power_capital @OmnesCapital have a major problem right now. They have repeatedly sought to distance themselves from the unauthorised land clearance and bulldozing of lands and a recorded monument in my parish, insisting they were not part of its Bellville solar project plans. Now those same lands appear in multiple reports submitted as part of its planning application. See the earlier evidence documented here: teapawt.net/declanganley/status/19… teapawt.net/declanganley/status/20… The central question, as it always has been, is simple: were the lands in Oakwood South part of the project or were they not? Thing is, @power_capital @OmnesCapital cannot have it both ways. When questions were raised about the works taking place on Oakwood South, the company frantically tried to distance itself from those lands. @OmnesCapital scrubbed years worth of tweets and locked down its socials in a damage limitation exercise. But its new planning application contains archaeological and ecological reports covering those same lands. Both sets of consultants visited the project sites in May 2025 – while works reported to Galway County Council by local watchdogs as unauthorised were under way. @power_capital @OmnesCapital own archaeology report even includes a photograph showing the lands around the monument bulldozed. So let’s ask the obvious questions. Did the archaeologist identify the works as potentially unauthorised? Did the ecologist do so? Were the consultants told who carried out the works and under what permission? Were these matters properly recorded in their reports? You do not visit land while substantial works are taking place around a recorded monument, write reports about that land, and then expect nobody to ask whether the works were lawful. That is not a minor technicality. It goes to the reliability of the application’s evidence base. @power_capital @OmnesCapital cannot tell the community that the lands in Oakwood South that are subject to a planning injunction that is currently before the courts (paid for by the community) and an enforcement action by the council is not part of the project, then include those lands in the project’s archaeological and ecological evidence. That contradiction needs to be confronted directly by Galway County Council. Oh, and it gets worse. The application depicts a 220kV substation on land that @power_capital and @OmnesCapital has long included within the Bellville project – land previously presented as part of the solar-panel area. Yet the application does not clearly identify the substation’s function, status, grid connection or cable route. @power_capital @OmnesCapital are presenting Bellville as an integrated project involving solar generation, battery storage and major grid infrastructure. A 220kV substation with no clearly described connection to the transmission network is not a coherent description of an operational solar farm. Unless this is the first off-grid utility-scale solar plant in the world? Because that is what the application appears to describe right now: solar panels and a major substation – but no properly explained connection to the grid. You genuinely couldn’t make this up. My own view is that this is not a case of the public needing to study the planning file in more detail. It is a case of @power_capital @OmnesCapital failing to explain its own project properly. The community should not have to reconstruct the development from contradictory statements, consultant reports and shifting explanations, but that is exactly what @power_capital @OmnesCapital is expecting them to do. For shame. The application should be invalidated. @power_capital @OmnesCapital should be required to submit a proper application that explains the full project, accounts for the works already carried out and identifies the complete electrical infrastructure from the outset. No more jazz hands.