When the minister for arts and heritage, Mr Michael D. Higgins, lodged an application to develop visitor facilities at Mullaghmore in the Burren National Park in October 1996, few thought the same planning application would remain in the planning process almost 3 1/2 years later.
When government plans were first announced for an interpretative centre at Mullaghmore in April 1991, a successful High Court challenge to the plan by a local community group, the Burren Action Group, would bring about arguably the most fundamental change in Irish planning law in decades.
This occurred after the Supreme Court ruled in April 1993 that the State agency, the Office of Public Works (OPW), could not be considered exempt from seeking planning permission.
The successful challenge to the plan rendered the works at the Mullaghmore site illegal. The partially-completed centre today serves as a reminder of the battle which has been waged for the last nine years over visitor facilities for the Burren region.
Finally we have reached endgame, with An Bord Pleanala expected to make a decision in the next seven working days on the appeal by the Minister for Arts, Heritage, Gaeltacht and the Islands against Clare County Council's decision to refuse planning permission for visitor facilities at Mullaghmore.
A board spokesman could not say what date a decision would be issued.
The board will rule on the Minister's scaled-down application which seeks to develop an entry point at Mullaghmore, to contain toilets, ranger accommodation and a covered waiting area.
The application also seeks to retain a car-park, which will provide space for 76 cars and four minibuses, and part of the existing treatment plant.
Even though the controversy has spanned almost a decade, ironically it was only last July at an oral hearing in Ennis that the two opposing sides crossed swords to debate the various planning issues related to locating visitor facilities at Mullaghmore.
The hearing also served as a reminder of the emotion the Burren landscape and the Mullaghmore controversy generates. None more so when, on the fourth day of the hearing, a number of people in the public gallery were moved to tears after a farmer, Mr Patrick McCormack, articulated why he and others had spent over nine years opposing successive government plans to site visitor facilities.
He said: "We're ordinary people, living ordinary lives with no open cheque books behind us to fund this. We are doing it for one reason, and that reason is based on love; love of a mountain, love of an area that we feel is above and beyond any type of financial gain, and it should be left alone for future generations to experience it the way it is experienced today."
Later in the hearing, the vice-chairman of a Kilfenora-based rural co-op which operates the Burren Centre, Mr John Keane, gave a glimpse of the fractious nature of the controversy when he said: "Many of my friends are on opposite sides. I regret that, and it is painful for me to talk about it."
Later a local land-owner, Mrs Elizabeth O'Brien, in a reference to the action group, asked the hearing: "Will the State be allowed to accommodate the citizens of this State in a national park and give precedence to their rights over the rights of an elitist group in this country?"
However, most of the submissions during the nine-day hearing were taken up with expert witnesses from both sides giving technical evidence.
In his closing statement, Mr Eamon Galligan, for Ms de Valera, said that the provision of the entry point would provide a management tool for the monitoring and control of visitor impacts on the national park and the candidate Special Area of Conservation (cSAC).
He said: "The relative concentration of visitors at the facility, under the control of Duchas, will assist in reducing sporadic, uncontrolled impacts of visitors elsewhere."
However, the action group and An Taisce argue that the development of the entry point will lead to an even greater concentration of visitors, which will have a serious, long-term negative impact on the special qualities of the park and the Mullaghmore area.