Industrialisation of Metropolitan Green Belt

There is a flagrant contradiction between the objectives of the draft City Plan, and the recent endorsement by the City of the second stage of a solar development on Garravagh Hill, at the extreme west of the expanded Cork City, a sensitive part of the Strategic and Prominent Metropolitan Green Belt. The first stage, for 85,000sq m of solar panels on top of the hill, went through Cork County Council in 2019 (ref 18/7410). Following the expansion of Cork City, the second stage of the development, the Grid Connection, running from the top of the hill, down the hillside, through the Lee Valley and over the river to the nearest electricity substation, went through Cork City Council.

We ask that the Strategic Planners act on their commitment to give the "highest possible protection" to the ridges, hillsides and the Lee River Valley, and respect their own statements about the importance of natural capital, encouragement of ecology and biodiversity, re-wetting of river valleys, and so on. If a biodiversity emergency means anything, it means preserving what we have from this point on. Instead, planning authorities bend to the demands of business interests by allowing the infiltration of industrial developments such as 55 acres of steel and plastic on an ecologically rich hilltop, and a Grid Connection that would run through a designated flood plain, disturbing riparian vegetation and a local beauty spot. 

Without putting the action to the word, a Green and Blue draft City plan is no more than greenwashing.

For a full account, please see the attached Grid Connection Objection submitted to Cork City Council earlier this year, and the Appeal currently under consideration with An Bord Pleanála.