The Government has cleared the way for the development of retail superstores by the Swedish furniture group Ikea and the US warehouse giant Costco Wholesale.
With the removal of a cap on the size of stores, which has applied since 2001, retailers will be able to build superstores in Dublin and eight provincial locations.
The Minister for the Environment, Mr Roche, said the change will apply only to sellers of durable goods and not to food retailers.
The first development is likely to be in Ballymun, north Dublin, where Ikea wants to build a major store on a site adjacent to the M50 ringroad and the M1 motorway to Belfast. The plan is being developed in co-operation with the Ballymun regeneration project.
The Government has also received a submission on the planning guidelines from Costco Wholesale, which has 449 warehouses worldwide, 15 in Britain, and annual sales of €35.8 billion.
The Minister's announcement was welcomed by the Competition Authority, which said it would lead to lower prices for consumers. However, the independent retailers lobby, RGDATA claimed it "set a bad precedent".
Mr Eamon Gilmore, Labour's environment spokesman, said the new guidelines will dramatically change the nature of retail activity with "huge consequences" for tax reliefs, traffic and planning.
Mr Roche dismissed as "barking mad" claims that an Ikea store in Ballymun would lead to 15,000 more car journeys in each direction on the M50. There were 5,000 car movements daily to an Ikea store in Glasgow, he said.He pointed out that the Ballymun site would likely be used for offices if the Ikea development did not go ahead and these would be just as likely to generate increased traffic.
Although Mr Roche said he had had no discussions with Ikea, he believed it would locate in Northern Ireland if the Ballymun store did not go ahead.
The Minister made light of the concerns of domestic retailers and said warehouse developments would have to be located near motorways or dual carriageways. He said Ikea was likely to set up only one store in Ireland, as it catered for a catchment population of six million.
The local authorities in Cork, Galway, Dundalk, Galway, Letterkenny, Sligo, Limerick-Shannon and Athlone-Tullamore-Mullingar will be empowered to sanction warehouses above 6,000 square metres from next month.
However, Mr Roche said giant stores were unlikely on the thresholds of towns such as Letterkenny as the population was not large enough.
