The West Dublin Action Group, which successfully opposed a casino-driven scheme for the Phoenix Park racecourse site, is gearing up to fight the Taoiseach's plan for a national stadium at Abbotstown.
"We're back on the warpath," said the group's chairman, Mr Leo Gibson. "The stadium project is so obviously unworkable that we will be opposing it with the same determination and resources as we deployed against the Ogden/Sonas Centre plan for the racecourse site."
Given that some estimates of the eventual cost of developing Stadium Ireland and its associated facilities on the State laboratory site at Abbotstown have been put as high as £1 billion, Mr Gibson said he would not be surprised if it included a money-spinning casino.
However, he made it clear that the action group's opposition to the proposed stadium was based on a technical analysis of its traffic impacts on the surrounding greater Blanchardstown area, which had been designated as Dublin's main growth area north of the Liffey.
The group said the area's road network had already exceeded its capacity, as evidenced by long tailbacks during morning and evening peak periods on both the N3 and the M50. Neither the main road through the Phoenix Park nor the Navan Road could handle the traffic generated by the proposed stadium "even if there was no other traffic on the road". How Blanchardstown shopping centre could cope was "unimaginable".
While Sports Campus Ireland Ltd, the project's promoters, had said that 55 per cent of the 80,000 people attending a major event at the stadium would travel using public transport, the action group maintained that there was no capacity to cater for this demand. "Dublin Bus can transport only 10,000 fans from the city centre for a match start time no earlier than 8.30 p.m.," according to research carried out by the group, while Bus Eireann had all of its fleet out on lengthy country runs, with peak departure times of 6 p.m. to 7 p.m.
With only 7,000 parking spaces on or adjacent to the Abbotstown site, it estimated that between 8,000 and 16,000 car drivers seeking to attend a major event at the stadium - such as a Saturday afternoon rugby international - would have to park in nearby housing estates.
"It is because of the quite obvious intractability of these problems that we now say this project will not work," the group declared. And it called on the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, to abandon the plan just as Fianna Fail had ditched the casino scheme for the racecourse site in 1997.
"If this development is not stopped we will be urging the 100,000-plus voters in the region, and especially the 21,000 people who directly supported us by submitting planning objections to the racecourse site project, to vote against the Government" in the next election.
Mr Gibson said he was convinced that at least two Fianna Fail seats were "up for grabs", one in Meath and the other in Dublin North West. If necessary, the action group would consider fielding its own independent candidates if Abbotstown was not abandoned.
He made it clear, however, that the group had no objection to the proposed 50-metre, Olympic-size swimming pool on the site, for which a planning application has been lodged with Fingal County Council. "That would be like objecting to motherhood and apple pie."
