Sir, - Your commercial property section (January 22nd) reports An Bord Pleanala's refusal to grant planning permission for a bar and function room at the soon to be completed Travel Lodge, Navan Road. The reason quoted was the preservation of the visual break between urban areas.
I'm puzzled. An Bord Pleanala has decided that this building will damage the visual break. Yet last year, in filling an adjacent 100-plus acre site, it granted planning permission for a 65,000-seater football stadium, a 13,000-seater indoor arena, a 2,500-seater international conference centre, a 500-bedroom hotel with casino and leisure facilities, shopping facilities, 5,000 car-parking spaces, roads, bridges, et al.
I call on An Bord Pleanala to explain this discrepancy. If it chooses to offer an explanation, I would ask that it avoids phrases like "the national interest", which the beleagured residents of Castleknock have found so inadequate in the past. They know the destruction the Sonas Centre would bring to their community traffic and parking chaos, air and noise pollution, crime litter, and last but not least, the elimination of the visual break between urban areas (see paragraph one):
An Bord Pleanala enjoys a privileged position; it has arbitrary powers within a democracy. In the interests of democracy, an explanation would be appropriate. Yours, etc.,
Castleknock, Dublin 15.