An Taisce has criticised Galway City Council for its "heavy- handed" approach to the proposed €3 million redesign of Eyre Square in the city centre.
Mr Derrick Hambleton, chairman of An Taisce's Galway branch, also criticised the "adversarial" approach adopted by the council at a Bord Pleanála hearing yesterday.
The hearing was convened to hear submissions on the environmental impact statement for the project. The proposed revamp of the Georgian square, which was described by a district court judge last year as the "largest open-air arena in the country", was initiated in January 1999 by the former city manager, Mr Joe Gavin.
The draft project, drawn up by Mitchell and Associates, Dublin-based landscape architects, and Muir Associates, consulting engineers, aimed to transform the square into a series of plazas on a European theme, and to return the urban space to pedestrians.
It proposed that formal landscaping be replaced by informal wooded areas, including a sculpture garden where existing features - the limestone figure of Pádraic Ó Conaire, the writer, and the brown hooker sails designed by Eamon O'Doherty - might be relocated. Visual "clutter" would be replaced. The hearing concluded last night.