Countdown to Deadline
[Feb 2025]
We’re expecting to get a verdict around St Patrick’s Day. We will see if Cork County Council are going to go with the hundreds who have objected to or are they going to with the big business French profiteers who don’t give a damn about Newmarket.
This website hasn’t been updated since last September so here’s a few things that happened.
Letter to the Editor – members letter published in the Examiner
Major fire – lithium-ion battery factory in Claregalway explodes
Signs of Resistance – Posters to keep the Battery Energy System in our minds
Planners Seek Clarity
UPDATE: We found out that the County Planners have written to Neoen – the French company planning to battery storage site in Curraduff.. The planners have asked Neoen to clarify certain technical points and make more documents to support. They have given them six months to respond.
From our perspective this is the weakest response we could have gotten. The county planners never said they were opposed to the battery, they never mentioned that local residents are entirely resistant and the six months is surely to be a way to avoid the issue affecting the election. FFS we just landed over 200 objections on the planning office desk.. It doesn’t matter what documents Neoen want to make, the battery isn’t wanted by anyone. Cork County Council please wake up!
You can find the article about the county planners’ letter at independent.ie.
VERY IMPORTANT: If you lodged an objection you will receive a receipt in the post in the coming weeks. If this case goes to an Bord Pleanala we will need that receipt.. So when you get it back in the post, please drop it to Newmarket Post Office or get in contact with us here or on the website.
Our Group
We are a community group setup with the sole purpose of stopping a private energy company’s sneaky construction of a Battery Energy Storage System site on a hill next to our town. Our group was formed after a public meeting attended by 300 concerned locals.
We are not against green technologies, we just believe that it is reckless to put a giant lithium-ion battery which is a known fire and pollution risk where:
- The prevailing wind blows straight over the site into Newmarket [population of 1,000].
- The nearest public buildings are a national school, a health centre and a nursing home.
- The site is next to residential dwellings and farms.
- Newmarket is a bottleneck for traffic and could never accommodate an orderly evacuation or large emergency response.
- The site is next to a watercourse that feeds into the Dalua river only a few hundred feet away. The Dalua is one of the main headwaters of the Blackwater river.
This website is here to give information and to help people focus on preventing this potentially lethal business venture from destroying our town and it’s environment. If you are in doubt about what we are doing just google “battery fire”..
Please join the mailing list if you want updates about how to help.