Gas plant is turned down by council

PLANS for a gas-powered electricity station that would generate enough power to light 300,000 homes have been turned down by Cork County Council.

Capable of generating 400 megawatts of electricity, the station would be smaller than the ESB plant at Aghada which has an output of 525 megawatts.

The company behind the project, Mountlawn Ltd, is based in Galway and applied last October to build the plant at Courtstown in Little Island.

Among objectors to the plan were East Cork Tourism and Glounthaune and Little Island community associations.

Little Island Community Association chairman, Pat Murphy, said local residents’ biggest concerns centred on the size of the chimney stack, which they felt would have a major visual impact on the area.

“We recognised that as a gas-powered station it would be a clean industry, but the stack would be an eyesore, it was 40 or 50 metres high. It would stand out like a sore thumb,” Mr Murphy said.

“In fairness to the developers did sit down and talk with us about it. If the stack had been smaller then maybe it wouldn’t have had the same impact,” the community council chairman added.

Cork County Council planners ruled against the project because the plans didn’t agree with the site’s specific industry zoning objective for a large stand alone industry, under the 2003 County Development Plan.

“Therefore the proposed development would materially contravene the objective indicated in the County Development Plan and would be contrary to the proper planning and sustainable development of the area,” a county council spokesman said.

He added that planners had also felt the plant was so large it would “adversely impact on the visual amenities of the area.”

It is not clear whether the company will appeal the decision to An Bord Pleanála, as nobody was available for comment yesterday.

Meanwhile, ESB spokesman Kevin McDermott said the semi-State company was ready to invest e200 million in upgrading the Aghada power station. The ESB wants to build a new 400 mega watt station on a site next to the existing plant.

Mr McDermott said that while planning permission and an environmental license had been granted, he wasn’t at this stage able to pinpoint when construction was likely to start.