South Dublin County Council is moving swiftly to designate the controversial Liffey Valley shopping centre site at Quarryvale as the "major town centre" to serve the Lucan-Clondalkin area.
At its meeting today in Tallaght, the council is to consider varying the county development to permit Liffey Valley's owners to double the retail space on the 180-acre site, strategically located where the M50 meets the N4.
This is in line with one of the principal recommendations of a new Retail Planning Strategy for the Greater Dublin Area, commissioned by its seven local authorities and due to be published this week. It comes down in favour of expanding Liffey Valley.
The proposed variation would also downgrade the zoning of a site at Balgaddy which has been designated as its future town centre for 30 years. The Balgaddy site is located on the Dublin-Cork railway line. Though more central geographically for Lucan-Clondalkin, it would become merely a "district centre". South Dublin County Council's rationale for this radical change in planning policy - endorsed by the retail strategy consultants - is that, because Liffey Valley already exists, it can be developed to meet "immediate pressures" for more retail space.
But this would "compound the single most grievous planning error in Dublin in recent decades", according to one interested observer. "It would also reward probably the most corrupt land rezoning decision ever made by the county council".
In evidence to the Flood tribunal, Mr Frank Dunlop, the public relations consultant, said £112,000 was paid to members of the council at the time of the Quarryvale rezoning votes in 1991 and 1992 on behalf of Barkhill Ltd, its prospective developers. The Cork developer, Mr Owen O'Callaghan, who owned Barkhill, denied this was done at his behest. It will now be up to the tribunal to determine if the councillors were influenced in adopting the rezoning against planning advice. After a "cap" of 23,225 sq metres was imposed on the retail space at Quarryvale, Mr O'Callaghan proceeded with the development of a scaled-down shopping centre. It opened under the Liffey Valley banner in 1998.
Even before the opening, a half-share in Barkhill Ltd was acquired by the London-based Grosvenor Estate, controlled by the Duke of Westminster. The development was seen by Grosvenor as a cast-iron investment. However, Barkhill's ambition to double the size of Liffey Valley suffered a setback in March, 2000, when An Bord Pleanála rejected its planning application, largely because of fears that it would lead to serious traffic congestion on the M50 and N4. Since then, Barkhill has been quietly pressing for an early decision to upgrade Quarryvale's zoning to "major town centre" - even though it is located at the north-eastern extremity of the emerging town it is intended to serve.
The proposed variation of the county plan is expected to be vigorously opposed by Treasury Holdings, Dublin's largest commercial property developers, which has an interest in the rival town centre site at Balgaddy, and by independent retailers. Because of the "cap" on Liffey Valley, the centre is still without a large supermarket. One of the principal elements of the plan rejected by An Bord Pleanála was a major Tesco foodstore. Despite early claims by the developers that Liffey Valley would provide much-needed retail facilities for the immediate area, it was always conceived as a motorway shopping centre.
With no cap on its expansion and no prospect of serving it by rail-based public transport for 10 years or more, sceptical planners fear that Liffey Valley will become an even more significant traffic generator, causing massive congestion on the M50.