THE Heritage Council has asked the ESB to explain why it is demolishing Portarlington power station in Co Laois, the earliest peat-fired generating plant in Ireland.
Part of the power station's impressive brick facade, dating from the 1940s, was pulled down at the weekend. An ESB spokesman said yesterday the rest of the building would be demolished before the site was handed over to the local community for development as an enterprise centre.
He added that the ESB had been advised there was "no alternative to demolition" as the building was deteriorating after being decommissioned some years ago. Some parts, such as boilers and turbines, would be given to a museum in Birr, Co Offaly.
Asked whether any consideration had been given to adapting the building for a different use, as had been done in other countries, the spokesman said the ESB had been advised that this was not possible. "It was built for power generation and that function is over.
Until recently, there had been no objections to demolition on architectural grounds. "We've been totally open and kept the local community informed about what we were, ding," he, said.
"The asbestos in the plant is also being removed in accordance with strict international standards."
However, Ms Mary Hanna, architectural officer of the Heritage Council, told The Irish Times she had been in contact with the ESB seeking information on the proposed demolition of "this fine building" as the council was about to commission a survey of Ireland's industrial heritage.
Mr Gerard Carty, a Dublin architect, expressed amazement that the ESB would be so "myopic as to demolish its first peat-fired power station, "a monument to those visionaries who grafted a semi-industrial outlook on to the principally agricultural psyche of the midlands".
He said modern structures, such as Portarlington power station, form part of our legitimate architectural, industrial and, indeed, cultural inheritance". Rather than being demolished, the building itself could have been adapted for use as an enterprise centre, a practice now "commonplace" in other European countries.
Mr Carty said the "eradication" of such an important historical landmark filled him with despair. Featured in the recently-published book, The Bogs of Ireland, by John Feehan, he said it would be "mourned by future generations as part of our mythological heritage".
