Fingal County Council last night voted to reject plans for a €7 billion theme park in north Dublin which councillors described as "vague" and "sloppy". The consortium behind the proposals said it would now examine the possibility of building the theme park in Britain instead.
An overwhelming majority of councillors - 19 to one - accepted advice from planning officials that the plans were unacceptable.
The County Manager, Mr Willie Soffe, said the plans lacked detail, credibility, were unsustainable for the area and violated existing planning guidelines.
"I and the management staff of this council cannot accept this proposal. Rezoning changes required for this will not be included in my draft of the local development plans," Mr Soffe said.
The consortium, United Entertainment Partners (UPE), refused to reveal the identity of investors who, according to the group's managing director, Mr Louis Maguire, had already pledged up to €1.5 billion for the project.
After the vote, the chairman of UPE, Mr Owen O'Callaghan, said he was disappointed at the result and defended the lack of detail in the planning proposals.
"This is just a pre-planning presentation, a very early one, not a full-scale planning application at all. It was extremely preliminary and that's the way we had arranged it to be and that's the way the council would have looked at it," he said. The developers said Vega City, spread across 2,500 acres outside Lusk, Co Dublin, would attract 37 million tourists annually, employ 40,000 people, include 14 hotels, 10,000 apartments and the world's longest monorail.
Mr O'Callaghan said the consortium had not compiled a full planning permission proposal as it would cost in the region of €10 million and it did not want to "take the risk" of doing so at this stage.
Mr Maguire also defended the consortium's decision to keep the identity of most of its investors secret, insisting the information was commercially sensitive.
Some councillors criticised the proposals and accused the developers of using the theme park plans to push forward separate plans for commercial and residential development.
Fine Gael councillor Mr Cathal Boland, who proposed the motion calling for the plans to be rejected, said the plan was "sloppy" and lacked credibility.
"The sensible thing to do is to tell them to go away, get their act together and come back if they have credibility, but don't be wasting the time of the council," he said.
Socialist Party councillor Ms Clare Daly said the development should be labelled "Vague City" because the plans were aspirational and lacked meaningful detail.
"The report is so vague that it is frightening. If I were to announced plans to build a space station employing 100,000 people, the plans would be just as realistic," she said.
However, Cllr Anne Devitt (Fine Gael) said the plans should not be lightly dismissed and called for a further study funded by the developers under the management of the council.
In a vote on the motions, Cllr Ciarán Byrne (Labour) was the only representative to vote against the rejection of the plans.
Making his presentation to the councillors, Mr Maguire urged councillors to consider the proposal as there were no existing plans to develop the 2,500 acres in Lusk except for landfill facility.
"It's either Vega City or a dump," Mr Maguire said. "
Mr O'Callaghan said he did not know the area of north Dublin very well, but when he visited it as part of preparations for the Vega City proposal, he was "shocked" at how underdeveloped the area was at just 12 miles outside Dublin.
