Appeals board rules against €20m biodiesel plant

PLANS for a €20 million biodiesel plant in Cork were shot down by An Bórd Pleanála yesterday.

Earlier this year, Cork County Council gave farmer and developer Dennis Howard permission to build a 100,000-tonne biodiesel production plant on an 11-acre family-owned site on rolling farmland near Kildorrery in North Cork.

The project was given the green light despite advice from a senior council planner that the site, on what was once the demesne of Bowens’ Court Country House, was unsuitable.

Locals appealed the decision to An Bórd Pleanala who decided unanimously yesterday to refuse permission on two grounds — namely the site’s remote location and traffic fears.

A spokesperson for the board said the decision was based generally in accordance with its own inspector’s recommendation.

“The site of the proposed development is located randomly in the open countryside remote from any industrially zoned lands and at a location that has no significant advantage in terms of the sustainable transportation of raw materials or final product to and from the site,” their report stated.

“Having regard to the nature of the proposed development, in particular the type and quantity of raw materials proposed and to the consequent transportation movements generated in the sourcing of those materials and in the distribution of end product, it is considered that this proposed biodiesel facility, having regard to its geographic situation, would give rise to unsustainable transportation movements resulting in an inappropriate and unsustainable form of development at this un-serviced rural location.”

The report went on to say that the plant would generate a huge amount of traffic and endanger public safety.

A spokesman for the Kildorrery and Shanballymore Concerned Residents’ Group said they felt justified that their concerns had been taken on board.

Meanwhile, Councillor Alan Coleman, a director of the EU-sponsored Energy Cities group, said he was shocked at the decision.

“The big danger in Ireland is that the biofuels industry will be taken over by importers. It (the Kildorrery project) was to be one of the few that wasn’t port-based and it would have sourced local produce, such as oil seed rape, tallow and waste cooking oil, and provided local jobs,” Mr Coleman said.

Councillor Kevin O’Keeffe, who lives just a few miles from the site, said the decision was a blow to creating local jobs.