Councillors angry over city’s ‘land grab’ plan

CORK county councillors reacted furiously yesterday to proposals by City Hall manager Joe Gavin for a massive extension of the city boundary.

The councillors warned Mr Gavin that unless the proposals are shelved, he risked souring relations with County Hall.

“It’s an outlandish proposal. It’s akin to Napoleon’s move on Russia, and it’s doomed to the same fate,” said Cllr Alan Coleman.

The local leader of the Fianna Fáil party on the council warned that Mr Gavin faced losing cooperation with the county council.

“The city [council] is claiming their population hasn’t grown. Any local authority which didn’t experience a population growth in these unprecedented Celtic Tiger times does not deserve to have any further land to manage,” an angry Cllr Coleman said.

“The Docklands is the only major development on the city’s plate and it remains totally undeveloped. If that’s an example of how they’d run large tracts of land in the county, then God help us all,” he said.

Cllr Coleman said that his council had a very good track record of development, highlighting that the first commuter rail service to be opened in this country in years was planned for the county in 2008.

“He’s throwing the baby of cooperation out with the bath water. If Joe Gavin doesn’t drop these proposals he risks losing cooperation on coordinated development between the two local authorities. This is outrageous stuff,” Cllr Coleman said.

He added that it was off-the-wall for the city to look towards expanding into Passage West, Monkstown and south towards Ballygarvan.

The leader of Fine Gael in the county council, Cllr Tom Sheahan, described Mr Gavin’s proposals as high-handed. “As far as I’m concerned, there isn’t one square inch of the county available to him at this time,” he said.

He claimed that the full council had never been asked to sit down with their city counterparts and discuss options.

“We worked out an agreed waste strategy with them and then they backed out of it. At the time they didn’t even have the courtesy to tell us,” Cllr Sheahan said.

Cllr John Gilroy (Lab), who lives in Glanmire — one of the areas Mr Gavin wants to take control of — said he would “vigorously oppose” any expansion in that direction.