Planters replace Cork’s controversial 'robotrees' after €444,000 spend

Cork’s robotree saga officially ends as the council replaces the devices with flower planters after spending €444,000

UCC’s Centre for Research into Atmospheric Chemistry researcher Dean Venables labellled the robotrees 'a costly and ineffectual gimmick'.

Planters have been installed on the bases of Cork's infamous 'robotrees' in a move city chiefs hope will draw a line under the saga which has cost taxpayers just over €444,000.

The planters, complete with colourful floral displays, were placed onto the hexagonal wooden platforms left in situ on St Patrick’s St and on the Grand Parade following the removal of robotrees in May.

The five 'City Trees' devices, which are designed to improve air quality, had been at the centre of a storm of controversy since they were unveiled in the city more than five years ago.

Made and supplied by German firm Green City Solutions, they were unveiled in August 2020 as part of wider post-covid efforts to improve the city centre environment, in the hope that they would remove pollutants from the air by filtering it through a wall of moss.

The four-metre high electric-powered devices cost just over €365,000 to buy and install — money covered as part of a €4m funding allocation from the National Transport Authority — but they came with additional annual running and maintenance costs.

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The devices were immediately nicknamed robotrees, with UCC’s Centre for Research into Atmospheric Chemistry researcher Dean Venables labelling them “a costly and ineffectual gimmick”, while UCC emeritus professor of chemistry, John Sodeau, described them as a total waste of money.

As controversy raged, the council commissioned a performance study on the machines in June 2022 which concluded that they provided “no consistent evidence for improved air quality” either on the plinth upon which they sat or “in the immediate environs” of the machines.

There was more controversy in June when it emerged that even after that report, the city spent more than €23,000 maintaining the trees in 2023 and 2024.

The total spend on the devices had hit €444,000 by the time they were eventually removed from the city in May and placed in storage.

Efforts to find someone to take them have failed. Irish Rail had been poised to place them on a platform in Kent Station but pulled out at the last minute for health and safety reasons. Its experts said they could not take devices with flammable material such as wooden slats, and replaced the slats with non-flammable material was not possible.

Both the Taoiseach Micheál Martin and former Lord Mayor, Green Party Cllr Dan Boyle, have defended the CityTrees experiment.