THE permission granted by An Bord Pleanala for the controversial plan to redevelop the Phoenix Park Racecourse was significantly more lenient than its planning inspector recommended, The Irish Times has learned.
Despite an unprecedented 20,000 objections, the appeals board granted planning permission to Sonas Centre Ltd for a 63,000 seat stadium, a 12,000 seat indoor arena, a 359 bedroom hotel, a 2,000 seat national conference centre and a large casino on the former racecourse site.
The report of the inspector, Mr Simon Clear, shows that the number of conditions was reduced from 29 to 24 at the board's direction. The omissions include any requirement to provide remote "park and ride" facilities to avert traffic congestion.
Mr Clear recommended that before any stadium event was scheduled, "the location, availability, extent and planning status of proposed car parking (park and ride) facilities shall be agreed in writing with the planning authority, the Garda and relevant transport operators".
However, in a handwritten note by Mr M.J. O'Connell, the board member who dealt with the case, this Was omitted.
The board also dropped another condition requiring the developers to submit documentary evidence of traffic management and environmental protection procedures. These included "litter control, coach/car parking, traffic restriction cordons, measures to encourage use of public transport, crowd control and stewarding in the vicinity of the stadium, community liaison and ongoing measures for the amelioration of the impact of the development'
A related condition omitted at the direction of the board specified that the traffic management and environmental plan "shall be reviewed at half yearly intervals".
Also deleted by the board was a condition which would have required that complementary use of car parking be maximised "to prevent overflow of car parking onto adjoining roadways", a major local concern voiced at the week long oral hearing in February.
The board omitted another condition recommended by the inspector which would have required the developers to pay Fingal County Council a contribution towards landscaping the Tolka Valley linear park "to offset the loss of established and zoned open space on the site".
A proposed condition specifying that the entire development "shall be carried out and completed as a singled entity", rather than in a "piecemeal fashion", was also amended by the board. As rewritten, it now requires that the phasing of the development "shall be agreed with the planning authority".
In his 262 page report, the planning inspector agreed that the proposed facilities on the site, notably the stadium, "would have an injurious effect" on the amenities of adjoining properties. However, he said that this would not be seriously" injurious.
Referring to the impact on the Phoenix Park, Mr Clear agreed that the upper levels of the hotel block, arena and stadium would be visible from the Fifteen Acres and would also be "glimpsed between trees" from the main road through the park.
Dismissing a range of arguments against casino gambling, he said they "have no merit in physical planning terms" and were a matter for the regulatory authorities. "I recommend that no attributable effect be attached to the casino element of the proposed development," he wrote.
Noting that the casino floor would represent 6 per cent of the hotel complex, Mr Clear said it was "an insignificant element" of the overall scheme. "I do not consider it necessary for the board to ponder whether the casino would be the financial engine of the entire product."
He concluded that the entire scheme "requires that it be considered from a macro, national level, as well as a micro, local level". He believed the racecourse site "has unique advantages which are not available elsewhere in Dublin".
Mr Harry Shiels, spokesman for the West Dublin Action Group, a coalition of local residents' associations which spent £65,000 resisting the scheme, said he was shocked by the inspector's report and even more disturbed at the board's action in deleting conditions, especially on traffic.
"This is a scandalous decision and really worrying. The case put forward by our professional team was simply ignored," Mr Shiels said. "The board must explain why it omitted the condition about providing park and ride facilities to avoid traffic chaos in the area, which is the main concern of local residents."
