Skibbereen factory approval to be reviewed
Campaigners opposed to a plastics factory for the West Cork town of Skibbereen have been granted an application for a judicial review of the decision to allow it to proceed.
The factory has been earmarked for a site on the edge of the town and was initially granted planning permission by Cork County Council.
An appeal against that decision subsequently failed, with An Bord Pleanála (ABP) giving the proposed factory the green light in a decision announced at the start of last December.
The ABP decision was against the views of its own inspector.
However, in light of growing local opposition the Save Our Skibbereen group embarked on a fundraising effort to generate the initial €15,000 required to bring a judicial review in the High Court.
In recent weeks, the campaign has broken through that threshold and the group said in a statement: “Today in the High Court, our application for Judicial Review was granted by Mr Justice Seamus Noonan in Court 6. Documents to be served and matter returnable in Court on March 12, 2019.”
Both the IDA and An Bord Pleanála have defended the proposed factory, but in December, Oscar-winning actor Jeremy Irons lent his support to the campaign.
In a message delivered to a public meeting by filmmaker and local resident David Puttnam, also been a vocal opponent of the plan to construct the factory, Irons said:
“I’ve already spoken about the hopeless misjudgement of inflicting the development of a plastics factory on the people of West Cork — most particularly on our children and grandchildren.
I’ll continue to do all I can to fight what can only become a blight on the face of one of the last few truly sustainable places on earth.
At the same meeting, one of the original appellants, Brendan McCarthy, confirmed that a judicial review would be lodged in the New Year, with an accompanying fundraising campaign.
