WHEN you work in the equine sector, you don’t expect to have to educate yourself on Ireland’s energy policy, but like thousands of others across the country that’s exactly what we have had to do.

Across Ireland, as planning applications flood in from developers for an additional 200 onshore wind farms, with turbines 170 m high across 26 counties and EirGrid’s €3.2 billion Grid25 plan for over 1,000 km of high voltage overhead lines carrying wind power on industrial scale pylons, we have woken up to one of the biggest threats to Irish bloodstock in the history of our industry.