Plans by the Cork GAA County Board for a €75 million, 319-unit housing scheme for Cork city are facing local opposition.
Earlier this year the county board lodged fast-track plans with An Bord Pleanála for the strategic housing development (SHD) scheme on a site it owns at Old Whitechurch Road, Kilbarry, on the northern fringes of Cork city.
The profits it would earn from the €75 million scheme were earmarked to pay down the Páirc Uí Chaoimh stadium debt which stood at €29.74 million at the end of last September.
The scheme is made up of 85 semidetached homes, 118 terraced units, 53 duplex units and 63 apartments.
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The 37 acre site — beside Delaney Rovers GAA club — comprises open fields under grass, scrub and gorse while an old hurling manufacturing factory lies derelict at the western side.
An Bord Pleanála has received just over 20 objections to the scheme with 69 names appended to one objection by the Keep Murphy’s Rock Wild Group.
“We understand the need for housing, not just housing, but housing that enables low carbon sustainable communities, simultaneously protecting and valuing rather than degrading existing biodiversity,” the group said in its objection.
In its objection, the Cork Environmental Forum has told the appeals board that the development was not appropriate as it was “being built at the most distant and isolated part of the community on a site furthest from public transport links and most difficult to access by walking and cycling”.
Advancing the case for the scheme, Coakley O’Neill Town Planning said the scheme would “provide much needed housing units, at an appropriate density ... in an area of Cork city that has not benefited from the provision of a significantly scaled private housing development in many years”.
Marc Sheehan, chairman of the Cork county board, said, when lodging the plans, that “the shortage of housing in Cork and across the country is well documented and this development could provide homes for hundreds of families in a great location”.
