Limerick County Council has refused to grant planning permission for a 157ac solar farm near Rathkeale.

The project, which was being jointly developed by Irish developer Harmony Solar and ESB Solar, consisted of 301,000 square metres of solar panels.

The solar panels would have been installed in multiple rows and would have been connected to inverters and transformer modules. The panel arrays would have been a maximum of 3.2 metres high.

It was proposed that electricity would be exported to the national electricity grid through a connection to the existing Rathkeale 110kV substation.

The land would have been leased from one landowner and was due to operate for 40 years.

Refusal

The council refused the proposal on archaeological grounds. In the planning report, local authority archaeologist Sarah McCutcheon commented that the applicant was asked, under the further information process, to test the areas of the seven potential archaeological sites identified during the geophysical survey.

This was not carried out and the submission is "unacceptable", the report states.

The developer can appeal this decision to An Bord Pleanála, a process likely to take over a year.

Public consultation

A public consultation letter was issued to all residents within 500m of the site and a project website was set up.

The project received one submission from the West Limerick Deel Anglers Association.

The River Deel is adjacent to the proposed site and, while not objecting to the solar farm, they proposed a series of measures which they felt would help minimise the environmental impact of the development.

This included the clause that all works be undertaken during normal summer flow, outside the salmonid spawning season (June/July to September).