“That was a dark day,” recalled Tina Raleigh, with a tragicomic note in her voice. “We were completely blindsided.” Raleigh was bringing me back to July 2023 when the Government announced a new special protected area (SPA) for birds off the north-east coast of Ireland. An important day for the marine environment, this was an uncertain one for the wind developer, whose planned €1 billion wind farm site had just been entirely enclosed by an extra layer of planning requirements. Two months earlier, the North Irish Sea Array (Nisa) team had celebrated securing a route to market for its electricity…

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