Haulbowline will need 200,000 tonnes of soil

Up to 200,000 tonnes of soil will have to be brought into the site to cap it and level it off and work will have to be undertaken on a 24-hour basis because of tidal constraints.

The local authority’s project manager, Cormac Ó Súilleabháin, also said before any of this is done, the bridge from Ringaskiddy onto Haulbowline island will have to be upgraded.

Mr Ó Súilleabháin said the current bridge had a 25 tonnes capacity limit on it and it will have to be strengthened to ensure it can take up to 60 tonnes to facilitate the passage of lorry loads of soil. Work on upgrading the bridge will take around eight months.

Meanwhile, roads on the island will also have to be upgraded. The council has said it will then take a further 18 months to complete the remediation works. This will lead to noise from trucks and from piling. The landscape is currently very scarred and will be need in-filling.

Some of the materials on site, which are not hazardous, can be used for this, but it is still envisaged that 200,000 tones of soil and clay will have to be brought into the site to complete the landscaping job.

It is not yet clear where this material will be transported from.

The council said it would put mitigating measures in place to reduce the impact of noise and dust.

Jervis Goode of the National Parks and & Wildlife Service told the oral hearing he had some concerns.

He asked the inspector to ensure that a qualified and experienced marine mammal observer be appointed to make sure that dolphins, seals etc, were not harassed or forced to move out of the area because of construction. Mr Goode also asked no acoustic deterrent devices be used within a 1,000 metre radius of the site to scare off the mammals.

He recommended that the rock armour surrounding the site “be sufficiently high to take account of sea-level rise predictions based on up-to-date climate change models”.