A TRENCH measuring almost 150 feet wide and 66 feet deep is to be dug through Fairview Park to make way for the Dublin Port Tunnel, and the EIS concedes that this will require the demolition of the park keeper's house, the children's playground and numerous mature trees.
The excavation would run almost 600 yards through the middle of the park.be covered over and the park's landscape restored as far as possible with new planting
Since the park was laid out on a one time municipal dump - including rubble from O'Connell Street after the 1916 Rising and, later, the Civil War - special measures would be required to dispose of an estimated 126,000 cubic metres of spoil from this section of the project.
By arrangement with Fingal County Council, most of it would be dumped in the landfill site at Baleally, on Rogerstown Estuary.
However, 16 per cent of mainly inert material would be reburied in a "containment cell" on the realigned banks of the River Tolka.
Rail services would also be disrupted, as the scheme would require the "temporary diversion" of running tracks both for DART and mainline services between - Dublin and Belfast, while the port access route is cut through the railway embankment at Fairview.