‘Flood relief is of more benefit to Cork than event centre,’ says Minister

A Cabinet minister has said that Cork’s flood relief scheme will prove ultimately more beneficial to the city than the long-delayed events centre, and has said that new planning legislation will prevent objections delaying future such projects indefinitely.

Speaking to The Echo on a visit to the Dillon’s Cross Project Summer Camp in Cork Minister for Further and Higher Education Patrick O’Donovan said he believed that the Lower Lee Flood Defence Scheme, when eventually completed, would secure the city’s economic future.

Mr O’Donovan said that he was proud that part of his legacy as a former minister of state with responsibility for the Office of Public Works (OPW) was that the Morrison’s Island Public Realm and Flood Defence scheme had had a contractor appointed last month.

“The Morrison’s Island project will transform the city centre and I was delighted to do all the heavy lifting to deliver it.

“I took on everyone who was against it and took on all of the people who said it was like Armageddon,” Mr O’Donovan said, perhaps with tongue slightly in cheek.

City centre flood defences were planned a decade ago as part of the larger flood relief scheme, but were split off as a standalone project, with city councillors voting in 2018 to approve Part 8 planning for the scheme.

The plans were opposed by the Save Cork City Group, who had unsuccessfully mounted a legal challenge to the project.

Asked about the Government this week delaying a decision on additional State funding for the Cork Events Centre, Mr O’Donovan said that the third largest city on the island, the second largest in the State, should have an events centre.

“I know that it is something that has dogged the city council, [outgoing chief executive Ann Doherty] I know did an awful lot of work on this, it will be led by the city council, I would be optimistic,” he said.

“The bigger project that’s going to be needed for Cork isn’t the events centre, it’s the Cork city flood defence from Ballincollig the whole way to the coast in Cork Harbour, and that’s where I think the future of the city is going to be, because investment will flow, pardon the pun, into locations that will be protected from the climate in future.”

Mr O’Donovan added that people opposed to the flood relief scheme would have access to the planning process, but he said the Government’s Planning and Development Bill 2023, which is going through the Oireachtas, would streamline the planning process and prevent appeals going on indefinitely, “mañana, mañana, mañana, mañana”.

“Yes everybody can have their say, but no-one in Co Wicklow should have a say, I believe, in regard to infrastructure on the Grand Parade,” he said.