An Ikea superstore would draw more than 26,000 extra car trips every weekend to the Dublin suburb where it is likely to locate, an Oireachtas committee heard yesterday.
Mr Tom O'Connor, president of the Irish Hardware and Building Materials Association warned that opening a retail furniture warehouse in Ballymun would turn the M50 motorway around Dublin into a "car park".
The Minister for the Environment and Local Government, Mr Roche, recently announced changes to the statutory cap on retailing space to facilitate warehouse developments in some urban areas.
The move will facilitate the Swedish furniture seller's plans to open in Ballymun. Ikea normally trades out of warehouses that are bigger than the 3,500 square metre limit allowed by the retail planning guidelines.
Mr O'Connor told the Oireachtas Joint Committee on the Environment and Local Government that his association had commissioned a traffic engineer's report on the probable impact of the development.
"The proposed Ikea in Ballymun would generate up to 11,000 extra car trips at its peak on a Sunday," he said.
"On a Friday, the figure would be 7,000 extra car trips while, on a Saturday, it would be 8,500."
The association hired traffic consultant Mr T.J. O'Connor, who used the traffic measuring system that is applied to such developments in Britain.
He argued that the Department of the Environment and Local Government should have established the likely impact on traffic before announcing the change to the planning guidelines.
The changes will only be allowed in "gateway" towns designated in the State's planning blueprint, the National Spatial Strategy.
However, Ms Tara Buckley, director general of independent retailers' body RGDATA, argued that the changes would inadvertently lead to the establishment of out-of-town retail parks.
"This would have a devastating impact on the cities, towns and villages within a 50-mile radius of these designated gateways," she said.
Ms Buckley argued that the superstores would attract other large-scale developments to the same locations, and so would effectively lead to the growth of retail parks.
