FAI face 42 queries from council on plan

South Dublin County Council planning officials have made 42 queries to the FAI regarding its proposals for the development of Eircom Park at City West. The FAI intend to respond to the queries within two weeks, according to FAI chief executive Bernard O'Byrne.

Council officials submitted their queries earlier this week and no further progress on the association's application can be made until the FAI responds.

Among the topics covered are the impact of the development on local residents, the reliability of the association's traffic projections in its Environmental Impact Survey (EIS), and even the question of how the site's badger population might be encouraged to relocate prior to the commencement of building work.

Particular attention is paid in the document to the issue of traffic management which, O'Byrne says, "we always felt was going to be the key issue in this process".

According to the council's planners some of the figures submitted in the FAI's EIS relating to projected traffic levels are so "surprising" that they "call into question the credibility of the whole analysis".

Other difficulties arise in relation to the assumption in the survey that certain roads will have been constructed by the time the stadium is operational when this is by no means certain, according to the council.

The council's planners also query the figures put forward by the FAI in regard to public transport to and from the site, as well as its insistence that the height of the stadium will not be a major problem for local residents.

In fact, Dublin Bus has already informed the Dublin Transportation Office that the company would not have enough drivers to move the number of passengers envisaged on match days.

In relation to the stadium's height, the council has asked that the association detail what measures they propose "to reduce overlooking problems".

"I have already sat down and discussed the points raised with the project team," said O'Byrne yesterday, "and I'm satisfied that we will be responding to them very promptly. I'd be disappointed if we don't get back to them on all the points raised within two weeks.

"We have a very professional team working on this and because of that we had actually anticipated many of the points raised here, so much of the work is already done," he added. Amongst the points already covered, he insisted, was the request for further assurances that the stadium would not affect the safe operation or further development of Baldonnel aerodrome. O'Byrne believes it is now a question of the Defence Forces replying to the association's letter seeking approval.

The FAI's determination to reply quickly is not hard to understand given, as O'Byrne puts it, that the "clock doesn't start ticking again on this whole process until we do".

After that the council have two months to act, but even if they were to start the process of granting planning permission at that point it would take at least another two months before the decision is appealed to An Bord Pleanala.

Given the size of the project, it is highly unlikely that An Bord Pleanala would decide the project's eventual fate in less than six months and it could be much longer.

This means that instead of late 2002, as originally envisaged, the FAI is now looking at the autumn of 2003 as the earliest possible completion date for its home.

"There's still a long way to go in all of this," said Philip Fitzpatrick of local residents group the Westbrook Arena Steering Committee. "We're pleased that the council have identified a lot of the areas that we had seen problems with in the FAI's original submissions and we still feel that the scale of the problems mean that whatever is decided over the coming months the association will lose out when the proposal is considered by Bord Pleanala.

"In the circumstances it might be better for them to cut their losses now and start talking to Bertie."