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VILLAGEAugust/September
A
FORMER Fianna Fáil Minister for
the Environment, Dick Roche, has
accused Wicklow County Council
and two other state agencies of outra-
geous treatment of a family which has
tried to build a data centre on lands near
Newtownmountkennedy in recent years.
In the latest zoning and planning con-
troversy to erupt in Wicklow, Roche has
sharply criticised Wicklow County Council,
the National Roads Authority( NRA) and An
Bord Pleanála (ABP) over their treatment
of Brian McDonagh and his brothers who
obtained planning permission to build a
data centre at Kilpedder, Newtown, in July
but have been confronted by a series of
obstacles that have prevented the proposed
development.
Roche’s criticisms echo concerns of
other local councillors, and recent state-
ments in the Dáil by Sinn Féin leader, Gerry
Adams who has questioned the role of
former environment minister, Phil Hogan,
in a number of controversies in Wicklow
which, he argued, made him unsuited to
be Ireland’s nominee for the European
Commissionership.
Village has learned that the McDonagh
case and other controversial issues relat-
ing to Wicklow County Council and some
of its staff and elected members have
been brought to the attention of the newly
appointed environment minister, Alan
Kelly, who is considering whether an inquiry
into planning and re-zoning, as well as the
multi-million dispute surrounding illegal
ENVIRONMENT WICKLOW
Dick Roche hits out
Former Minister for Environment accuses County Council of maladministration
and his former department of ‘pass the parcel’. By Frank Connolly
site for
data
centre
August/September VILLAGE
waste disposal, in the county, should be
added to the ‘review’ underway into seven
counties (including Donegal). And Junior
Finance Minister Simon Harris has called
for an investigation into Wicklow County
Council.
According to a comprehensive letter of
complaint by Dick Roche to the then sec-
retary general of the Department of the
Environment, Geraldine Tallon, in July
, the treatment of the McDonaghs
revealed “serious maladministration” on
the part of Wicklow County Council and
the NRA as well as a bizarre decision by
ABP which the former minister asserts was
“quite hard to fathom” and which was subse-
quently overturned by the Supreme Court.
According to Roche, the McDonagh broth-
ers purchased the acre site at Kilpedder
on the edge of the M in and lodged
a planning application in January
for a business park on the lands which
were then zoned for business, science and
technolog y.
As their planning application was under
consideration by Wicklow County Council,
the McDonaghs learned that lands on the
other side of the M from their site at
Newtown were to be re-zoned for employ-
ment in a new Local Area Plan (LAP). During
discussions with Council staff they also dis-
covered that the zoning on their lands might
be downgraded to agricultural use only in
the draft proposals for the new LAP, render-
ing it commercially useless to them.
During this period, Brian McDonagh and
his brothers were invited to a meeting with
a land agent who was acting for a prominent
Dublin-based property developer and his
partners, where they were offered a -acre
parcel of land “at a knock down price of €
million” on the opposite side of the M to
their site. They were told that the land on
offer, which was zoned for agriculture, was
going to be re-zoned for industrial use in the
new LAP. They were then shocked when the
agent showed them a map of the new draft
plan which indicated that the land which
they owned was going to be de-zoned to agri-
cultural use. Ironically, the agent making
the offer was not aware that the McDonaghs
owned the lands which he said were to be
de-zoned.
A draft contract sent to the McDonaghs
also indicated that a nine-acre portion of the
lands they were being offered by this private
developer was owned by Wicklow County
Council. When the McDonaghs asked the
land agent acting for the prominent prop-
erty developer what guarantee he could give
that the land on offer would be re-zoned, the
agent offered to set up a meeting with senior
Council staff where the position would be
clarified.
At a hastily arranged meeting the fol-
lowing morning in the Druids Glen hotel
in Wicklow, Tony O’Neill, Economic
Development Manager of the Council,
arrived with a copy of the LAP containing
the County Manager’s recommendations
for re-zoning. The document showed clearly
that the lands on offer were to be re-zoned
for employment and that the McDonagh
lands were to be de-zoned. O’Neill alleg-
edly assured the McDonaghs that it was
.% certain that the lands would be re-
zoned by the elected members of Wicklow
County Council (although they had yet to see
the plans) and that the offer “represented a
great investment opportunity” for them.
On allegedly receiving this information,
which fundamentally threatened their plans
for a new business park, they immediately
contacted their solicitors, Whitney Moore,
who in turn wrote to the Council demand-
ing that it “stay any further consideration of
the draft LAP” until the proposed de-
zoning of their lands was removed, or face
injunctive legal action.
After Council management initially denied
that any such meeting had taken place at
Druid’s Glen a member of the council who
was present in the hotel and who had spoken
to Brian McDonagh and O’Neill verified that
the meeting had occurred. Two weeks later,
the Council voted in favour of the Manager’s
recommendations with the result that the
McDonagh’s lands were indeed de-zoned.
Following contact made by the chairman
of the planning committee, Councillor Pat
Vance (FF), the McDonaghs were invited to
attend yet another meeting at the Ramada
Hotel in Wicklow where they were asked
to put forward fresh proposals for devel-
opment on the lands they owned. It was at
this meeting that they were informed that a
proposal for a data centre on the land would
be favourably considered by the council as
it would not compete with plans for the land
on the other side of the M which had just
been re-zoned.
Rather than lose the prospect of any
development the McDonaghs withdrew
their planning application for the business
park and made a fresh one for a data cen-
tre on their lands which was, as promised,
quickly processed and granted permission
by the Council in July . Ecologic Data
Centres Ltd (EDC), the company formed by
the McDonaghs which made the successful
application, was immediately confronted
by more obstacles, this time from the NRA
which appealed the planning permission to
An Bord Pleanála.
The objection was lodged despite dis-
cussions between the McDonaghs and the
NRA before the planning application was
submitted. The McDonaghs were perplexed
at issues raised at their meetings with NRA
executives as they were aware that the
agency had not objected to proposed devel-
opments on the same lands with far greater
traffic implications for the area than the data
centre would pose.
They were informed by a senior NRA
executive that they had unfortunately being
caught in ‘cross-fire’ between the NRA and
the County Council. It was even-
tually agreed between both
agencies that the McDonaghs
would finance a survey to assess
the impact of the data centre
development on traffic flows at
the Ballyroan junction on the
M.
When the report was produced
by Moylan Consulting Engineers
another controversy erupted
when the Council refused to
present the report to the NRA
while the NRA refused to request
it from the Council. When the
McDonaghs tried to present the
report to the CEO of the NRA at
its headquarters they were asked
to leave under threat of arrest.
By this time they had made
contact with various local and
national representatives includ-
ing Roche who was by then the
Minister for European Affairs in
the dying months of the Fianna
Fáil-Green Party coalition.
Roche raised the issue with the
Council which agreed to provide any under-
taking required to allay the NRA’s concerns
regarding safety issues at the Ballyroan
junction and thus allow the road agency
to withdraw its objection to ABP. When he
called the NRA executive with whom he had
been dealing to inquire as to whether its
objection had been withdrawn in February
, McDonagh was put on to a different
official, Sean O’Neill, with whom he had had
no previous contact.
O’Neill appeared familiar with the plans
of EDC for a data centre and raised the
prospect of transferring its location to a
completely different site close to Shannon
airport in the south-west of Ireland. O’Neill
gave Brian McDonagh the name and contact
details for a man whom he described as a
friend of his, who could identify a suitable,
alternative site at Shannon. Shortly after-
wards, McDonagh was contacted by the
man in Shannon who, over a succession of
Bord Pleanála
claimed his
letter had not
been received
in sufficient
time as a
decision had
already been
taken. This
was despite
the note that
consideration
of the appeal
had been
deferred
“
VILLAGEAugust/September
calls, put forward the benefits of EDC re-lo-
cating to the Shannon region. According to
Sean O’Neill, his referral to the executive at
Shannon was innocent and arose after he
had a discussion with Brian McDonagh over
the potential loss of jobs if the data centre
scheme did not go ahead in Wicklow due to
planning difficulties.
“I was told that if did not happen all of
these jobs could be lost and I discussed the
possibility of other places it could happen
so that these jobs could be saved”, O’Neill
told Village.
This particular episode which Roche
described in his letter as “odd if not down-
right improper” did not lead to anything
as the NRA sent a letter to ABP on th
February indicating that the agency had
reached agreement with Wicklow County
Council on the traffic issues and was with-
drawing its objection.
“Whatever the issues between these two
state agencies may have been it seems utterly
disgraceful to me that a third party should
have been dragged into that dispute, par-
ticularly when the row between the state
agencies stands to cause a third party to lose
millions”, Roche wrote in his letter to Tallon
in July . By then, the McDonaghs were
exposed to a loss approaching €m on the
chronically delayed project.
Following discussion with the McDonaghs,
the only other objector, adjoining land
owner, Marc Michel, withdrew his appeal
of the data centre plans as the date for a
decision by ABP approached in the Spring
of . As there were no appeals remain-
ing ABP could now allow the development
to proceed, but life for the McDonaghs was
never going to be that simple.
Instead the planning consultants GVA act-
ing for the McDonaghs were informed that
ABP would make a decision on the matter
on th March and the board’s own files,
signed by one of its members, Conall Boland,
indicated that while it had been discussed by
board members on th March a decision
had been deferred to a further board meet-
ing. On th March the board was informed
by Frank O’Gallachóir, the planning agent
for the McDonaghs, that all objections had
been withdrawn.
In response ABP wrote to O’Gallachóir
two days later stating that his letter “had
not been received in sufficient time for the
Board to effect the withdrawal as a decision
had already been taken in the case”. This
was despite the note by Boland on ABP files
that consideration of the appeal had been
deferred on th March. Subsequently, on
st March, ABP refused permission for
the data centre overturning the grant of
permission by Wicklow County Council.
The ABP decision was successfully
appealed by the McDonaghs to the High
Court which questioned the manner in
which ABP dealt with the appeal and ruled
that the board had not acted fairly or prop-
erly. Compounding the McDonaghs’ misery
ABP appealed the High Court ruling to the
Supreme Court which ruled again in favour
of the McDonaghs last year.
A reply to his letter to Geraldine Tallon
was sent to Dick Roche by Des O’Brien
the Director of Services, Planning and
Development, with Wicklow County Council
in February . In his letter, O’Brien
accused Roche of having “a warped analy-
sis of events”. Before this communication
he had received no response from Tallon
or the Department to his explosive letter of
complaint.
O’Brien wrote: “The planning system
operates in full public view, and Wicklow
County Council has behaved honourably,
responsibly, and effectively throughout
this process. Your letter to the Department
is unworthy, spinning facts, and through
innuendo painting dedicated officials as
either corrupt or obstructive, and wholly
unconcerned about the public, and in this
case planning applicants, who we are here
to serve”.
Roche wrote an email to Tallon a month
later expressing his grave disappointment at
the manner in which the issue was handled
by the Department of the Environment and
what he described as a “dis-edifying attempt
at ‘pass the parcel’”.
He said that much of the
material in O’Brien’s letter was
a “political rant that should not
be written by a public servant”
and had “no bearing whatever
on the key issue of the manner
in which ABP has conducted its
affairs”. Roche also wrote that
it was a “matter of scandal that
two statutory agencies (Wicklow
Co Co and the NRA) could not
deal with the issues that existed
between them in connection with
road planning”.
Meanwhile, the McDonaghs are consid-
ering legal action in relation to the losses
they have incurred which are now in excess
of €m. “I am at a loss to understand why
there is such hostility to a project which
would bring quality jobs to Wicklow”,
McDonagh told Village. •
ENVIRONMENT WICKLOW
In his letter,
O’Brien accused
Roche of having
“a warped
analysis of
events”
“
Dick
Roche:
complaint
