The £67 million tunnel project across the River Lee was said to be "in danger" after a group of Cobh fishermen won an order restraining the builders from excavating essential in-fill material from the sea bed in Cork harbour. In the High Court Mr Justice Quirke granted the fishermen an injunction restraining the contractors from dredging the Spit Bank fishery. This will last until the High Court judicially reviews the validity of a licence, granted by the Minister of the Marine to the builders, to excavate the sea bed. Mr Eoin McCullough, counsel for tunnel contractors Tarmac Construction Ltd, PJ Walls (Civil) Ltd and Dredging International (UK) Ltd, told the court the decision created a crisis for his clients.
"It is immediately imperative that material is obtained from the sea bed or the whole project is in danger," Mr McCullough said. He asked that the judicial review hearing be brought forward from October to next week.
Mr McCullough said that leaving aside current losses of £70,000 a day caused by High Court litigation, his clients would incur further losses of millions of pounds in damages if they were forced to obtain in-fill sand and gravel material from elsewhere.
Emphasising the "extreme gravity" of the situation created by the court's decision, Mr McCullough said the Minister's licence to excavate lasted only until next December and it would take three months to dredge the material from the sea bed. He said it would be no comfort to the contractors to discover several months from now, when the licence had expired, that they had been entitled all along to excavate the sea bed. Mr McCullough said he saw no reason why the judicial inquiry could not be heard next Thursday or Friday. He said the consequences of a delayed hearing might well cause catastrophic damages for his clients.
Mr Declan Buckley, counsel for the Cobh Fishermen's Association Ltd, said he would require more time to prepare properly for the judicial review and would require discovery of all documentation prior to the Minister's decision to grant the licence.
The fishermen had told the court a whole community of 30 families depended on fishing of the lucrative Spit Bank in the harbour. They were convinced that dredging in the area would irrevocably damage marine life and fish stocks.
The High Court earlier ordered the fishermen to lift a blockade of fishing vessels which they had placed around a huge floating dredger, known as The Big Boss, which had been brought into the harbour to carry out excavation.
They were subsequently granted leave to seek a judicial review of the Minister's granting of the excavation licence. They were also granted an injunction restraining excavations until yesterday.
Mr Buckley told the court the fishermen grounded their opposition to the licence on three grounds: that the Minister had been misled about the contractors' intentions; that the licence required the sanction of the Minister for Finance, which had not been obtained; and that the Minister for the Marine had failed to satisfy the fishermen's concerns with regard to the damage that would be caused to fish stocks.
Mr Justice Quirke said he had not lightly come to his decision. He was acutely conscious of the extent of the development.
He said he was quite satisfied the fishermen could never be adequately compensated by way of damages for the loss of a way of life which had been handed down to them and which they hoped to hand on to later generations. On the other hand it was clear the tunnel-builders, if restrained from excavating the sea bed, would sustain great loss which they could never hope to recover from the fishermen.
Mr Justice Quirke said that to refuse the fishermen the relief they sought was in effect to predetermine the substantive issue and fundamentally deprive them of the full judicial review the court had granted them. He said that in the circumstances he would grant them an injunction restraining the builders from carrying out any excavation operations until the matter was determined by the court.
Mr Justice Quirke said he would make inquiries as to the feasibility of the full judicial review being heard next week and inform the parties today.