Residents in houses close to a £1.2 billion high-rise development proposed for Dublin's Spencer Dock would feel as though they lived at the foot of the Cliffs of Moher or the Grand Canyon, a priest told a planning appeal hearing yesterday.
Father John Wall, from St Laurence O'Toole church, said the 26-building development on a 51-acre site which includes a national conference centre would be like a "massive mountain plonked in the middle of the parish".
"If this is to be built it will be like living at the foot of the Grand Canyon or the Cliffs of Moher with windows," he told the Bord Pleanala hearing.
"Development we must have. A conference centre: wonderful idea, but not this. It flies in the face of visual sense, common sense, and it's certainly against natural justice." Father Wall and several residents' groups are opposed to the commercial and residential development, which they say was drawn up without local consultation.
Two coalitions of residents' groups are among eight parties appealing a decision by Dublin Corporation last August to grant partial planning permission for the largest urban development in the history of the State.
The developers - a consortium including Treasury Holdings and CIE - are also appealing the decision.
The corporation granted full planning permission for the conference centre, an office block and a residential block, with only outline permission for the remainder of the scheme.
It also attached more than 50 conditions and scaled back the development from 6 million to a maximum of 4.6 million sq ft.
This means the developers would have to apply for planning permission for each subsequent phase of the site's development over the next 10 years.
Mr David Healy, an environmental consultant assisting five community groups, said an old railway yard on the site was contaminated with substances, including heavy metals such as lead and arsenic.
Substantial excavations would produce contaminated dust which could pose a serious health risk, particularly to children, he said.
The developers' environmental impact study gave "entirely insufficient information on the proposed decontamination process. There appears to have been no meaningful analysis of the impacts of this process nor of the safest manner to deal with the hazards", he added.
Mr Mark Fay, a father of two from Seville Place, said the scheme's size would lead to claustrophobia and a "a sense of being walled in".
He was concerned at the physical and psychological impact the "community genocidal" scheme would have on him and his family.
Mr Fay said he placed his feelings and fears and those of his family in the hands of the board's inspectors and the developers.
"I feel that this is a life in this community. It's precious. It's warm. It's significant. It's vibrant and if you destroy that you destroy it at your peril," he said.
Mr Joe Costello, a Labour Party city councillor and Senator, said that Dublin Corporation had erred in granting partial planning permission for the project in advance of a height study to be completed this summer.
The Irish Georgian Society said the scheme would be a "major intrusion" on the low-rise skyline of historic Dublin.
The society's conservation officer, architect Ms Mary Bryan, said the view along Fitzwilliam Street towards Holles Street hospital would be disrupted by the development. The view from this area, known as Dublin's Georgian Mile, was important to the tourist industry and had to be treated with the utmost care and sensitivity, she said.
Ms Bryan said the scheme's Irish-born US-based architect, Mr Kevin Roche, had been compared by the developers' planning consultant to the giants of Irish literature.
"Seamus Heaney comes to mind, but not even he would say that every poem he wrote was of award-winning status," she said.
She said she would be delighted to have a Kevin Roche designed scheme, but not at such a cost.