Objections to 'unnecessary' land purchase for Cork schools site

Landowners say other sites should have been considered to house two schools currently in temporary rented buildings

Le Chéile secondary school is based in modular accommodation behind Ballincollig's community school.

Landowners objecting to a compulsory purchase order (CPO) for a two-school campus in a Cork town, where two schools are already in temporary rented accommodation, have described the move as “unnecessary and disproportionate” and suggested other sites should have been considered.

Witnesses for the estate of the late Merle Tanner set out their objections to Cork City Council’s proposed CPO of some 15 hectares of their land at Lisheens, west of Ballincollig, during a Bord Pleanála oral hearing into the CPO on Thursday.

The council said the CPO will provide the Department of Education with land to build two new schools — a 24-classroom primary school for Gaelscoil an Caisleáin, and a 1,000-pupil facility for Le Chéile secondary school.

The gaelscoil has been in temporary modular accommodation on the grounds of the town’s rugby club since it opened in 2017. Le Chéile, which opened in September 2021, is based in modular accommodation on a small site behind the town’s community school.

Senior counsel Eamon Galligan, instructed by solicitor Frank O’Connell and representing the estate of Ms Tanner, told the hearing that there was no evidence of a robust site-selection process, and he described the amount of land being sought as “unnecessary and disproportionate”.

Planning consultant Harry Walsh said other sites have been zoned for education for some time in the massive Maglin urban expansion zone, a mostly greenfield area to the southern side of the town, and that a specific seven-hectare site near the Maglin Rd should have been considered.

However, Ronan MacKernan, a senior executive planner with the council, said the development potential of the Maglin zone is constrained by significant infrastructural deficits, with various studies on land drainage and distributor road route options under way — work which could take five or six years to complete.

Sites have been zoned for education in the Maglin urban expansion zone.

“We are making progress. It’s slow and incremental. We are not making progress as fast as we would like. This is not an oven-ready site. It would be disingenuous to suggest this could be delivered any time soon,” he said.

Murty Hanley, an official in the Department of Education’s forward planning section, said Ballincollig is one of the areas in the country showing a projected increase in demand for school places at both primary and post-primary level.

Census data for the town shows a projected population increase for school-goers of around 1,200 at primary level and 750 at post-primary level, against the background of a projected 10,000 increase in the town’s population by 2030.

He said the existing requirement for school places in the town is “urgent” and the department cannot just wait for the infrastructure to be delivered in Maglin to allow alternative sites there to be considered.

“On the basis of zoning available, access, egress, cost of infrastructure, obtaining vacant possession, and economic viability, the subject site was deemed suitable to accommodate the two-school campus,” he said.

Senior planning inspector Jimmy Green will now prepare a report for consideration by the board, which will either confirm or annul the CPO.