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— village November - December 2009
, quarry-owner and busi-
nessman Paddy Whelan provided every old age
pensioner in the little Clare town of Kildysert
with a free sack of firewood. He said he had
been clearing land at the nearby Cahercon Pier,
an old cut-stone pier which he had been using
to transport stone to a Bord Gáis trench across
the Shannon.
The trees were in fact part of a felling of over
four hectares of woodland to prepare a site for
an explosives factory on the old Cahercon Estate
most recently owned by the Salesian Sisters. Fir
and spruce formed the bulk of the timber, but
ash, oak – some of it over years old - hazel
and beech – all crackled in the old age pension-
ers’ hearths that Christmas.
Unfortunately, Paddy had forgotten to get
a felling licence. It was only the first of a series
of annoying legislative problems that have cost
the developer over € million to date as he has
tackled some seven separate legislative require-
ments required for this proposal.
At least the felling licence issue was easily
enough solved – the Forest Service obliged with
a novel ‘retrospective’ felling licence. Although
the Forest Service has since admitted that there
was ‘no basis’ in the Forestry Acts for such a
licence, Paddy fell on his feet as the invalidity
of the licence then meant the replanting condi-
tions could not be enforced and it was now too
late to prosecute again.
Clare County Council further obliged with
a grant of permission in December .
But because the proposal was for an explo-
sives factory, other legislative requirements
kicked in. These included the Seveso Directive,
Department of Justice licensing regulations,
Foreshore Licensing, and even one obscure
remnant of colonial legislation – the
Explosives Act. Unfortunately for Paddy, that
Act application had to be approved by the
Local Authority with an Assent Hearing, open-
ing another can of bureaucratic worms.
The Hearing under the Explosives Act –
which specifically cites proper planning and
development as it predates the Planning Acts
– collapsed in May when the Inspector
refused to make public the conditions dealing
with safety. It was to lead to the first of many
trips to Dublin and the High Court there.
Ms Justice Carroll eventually ruled in
favour of the residents, pointing out reason-
ably enough that, “in order to be able to object
meaningfully the objectors must be in a posi-
tion to know the consequences which flow
from the establishment of the explosives fac-
tory”. However, that Hearing has never been
resumed, and the Explosives Act is listed among
the outdated Acts this Government proposes
to eliminate.
Meanwhile, in September , Mr Whelan
assembled different experts at the Temple
Gate Hotel in Ennis for the Oral Hearing on the
appeal against the planning permission. He
told the sympathetic media that he had already
spent over € million on the project.
That hearing came to an end on the first day
when the Inspector was unable to clarify if the
hearing was restricted to a ‘de novo’ examina-
tion of the project, or if it implemented new
European legislation that allowed a review of
other relevant issues. As he left the hearing in
protest, environmentalist Peter Sweetman said
it was as if they had gathered to play ball but “no
one knew if it was soccer or rugby”.
Six months later, the Appeals Board
quashed the planning permission. They were
concerned about the quality of the environ-
mental information provided and, in partic-
ularly, the more than , tons of infill
needed to bring the site above flood levels.
Nitrate pollution in the settlement ponds had
been the subject of environmental problems
at Enfield, County Kildare, the site of Ireland’s
only explosives factory to date.
Poor Paddy’s problems multiplied as legal
fires flared up over the lease on the pier which
was supposed to provide public access, the
state of the abandoned vessels that littered the
waters by the pier, the unauthorised site devel-
opment that had allegedly taken place, and the
Department of the Marine’s refusal to give a
Foreshore Licence on conservation grounds as
part of this unauthorised site development lay
within a designed nature conservation site.
His greatest problem was the fact that the
site was underwater - graphically shown by res-
idents’ photographs taken in . This led to
the refusal as the amount of fill required
was so great as to impose unacceptable trans-
port, amenity, and environmental burdens.
This was solved in his finest stroke. He
found a ‘quarry’ on the edge of the lands he had
purchased from the Salesians Sisters and had
Quarry-owner lied to get permission for explosives factory in Clare.
t o n y l o w e s
Planning
village_oct_09.indd 22 27/10/2009 15:37:57
it ‘Registered’ under the Planning Acts. The
key to Registration is that such quarries don’t
need planning permission on the grounds that
they have been operating since before the
Planning Act came into force.
As in countless other quarry Registration
cases across Ireland, the developer sup-
plied false information. Sister Nora Ryan,
the Order’s Provincial, wrote to the Local
Authority pointing out that they had owned
this land from to , that the “lands
were used for farming purposes only’ and that
‘no part of the lands was used as a commercial
quarry for any commercial purpose during the
time of the Salesian Sisters”.
The religious had no more success than
residents elsewhere in Ireland. Clare County
Council registered the quarry notwithstand-
ing. In April , planning permission
was granted again. Shortly thereafter, the
Department of Marine dropped their objec-
tion to the Foreshore Licence “following clari-
fication”. To date, they have refused to release
any details of this “clarification”.
It is particularly ironic that the weary and
disheartened objectors were then subject to
the wrath of the Irish Judicial System so often
directed against planning objectors. Mr Justice
Cook awarded costs (estimated to be well into
six figures) against them on the issue of their
rights to a timely and not prohibitively expen-
sive review of all the issues – Sweetman’s “soc-
cer or rugby”. That decision will no doubt join a
lengthening list of similar punitive awards that
may (or may not) be overturned after a recent
European Court of Justice ruling requiring
changes in our legal system to ensure it is not
“prohibitively expensive”.
Finally, to add insult to injury, the Appeals
Board’s recent approval even ignored the lim-
its placed on the quarry during the Registration
process – , tons a year – approv-
ing the plan to extract more than ,
tons. Inexplicably, the Inspector wrote
that “the limits placed on extraction in the
Registration process would not be binding on
this development”.
Yet even given this level of infill, the
Inspector had to admit that the access road
“would be at risk of flooding”, a fact that “may
give rise to concerns in relation to emergency
access/egress from the site”.
He also determined that there would be
“beneficial socio-economic impacts on prop-
erty values” and that the impacts of any explo-
sion on the ecology of the area would only be
“temporary”.
With decisions like these, Paddy better lash
out with more kindling for the OAPs – and keep
his experts on retainers.
“It is particularly ironic that the weary and
disheartened objectors were then subject to
the wrath of the Irish Judicial System”
is just what his benighted country needs but this
iconic story is once again being covered up by a largely agnostic establish-
ment. Village has uncovered a story that is bigger than the moving Marian
Statue at Ballinspittle in the s, bigger even than the Marian tree stump
at Rathkeale. This story is closer to the miraculous flight of the house of the
blessed virgin from Nazareth to Loreto in advance of the oncoming Muslim
Infidel in . A moving quarry. A tale of holy Ireland. Yet outside of these
columns, the media is a thick wall of silence.
The miracle is the registered quarry operated by Paddy Whelan at his pro-
posed Shannon Explosives Factory site at Kildysert in one of the most sce-
nic parts of the Shannon Estuary in Co Clare. This was not on the site at the
time of the planning application, but then miraculously appeared in
the early s and was registered by Clare County Council under Section
of the Planning and Development Act as a quarry which had been on
the site before the Planning Acts came into force in .
We know there was no quarry on the site when the first planning
application / was lodged in for an explosives factory, because,
both in the application particulars and in all the proceedings at the Bord
Pleanála oral hearing conducted by inspector Brendan Wyse, no mention
was made about it at all, at all. Indeed much of the argument at the hearing
- reflected in the inspector’s report - was about the implication of importing
, tonnes of material onto the site from quarries in the area, particu-
larly on the local roads infrastructure. So serious was this issue, that it was
the sole ground on which an Bord Pleanála refused the application.
However, a quarry already more than years old miraculously appeared
on the site sometime in the early s.
Furthermore what was discovered on the site was a -year-old quarry
since it was registered as such by Clare County Council under QY , on the
basis that it had been there before . Water into wine really.
However, a number of unresolved questions remain:
Did this new, but at the same old, quarry move from another location
and if so whence?
If it did move from another location, does this mean that there is an even
bigger hole in the ground somewhere else – making at least two miracles?
If it wasn’t a miracle, were extra terrestrials involved?
Or could there have been a time warp or worm hole?
If these explanations appear too complex there is an another explanation.
This is that the application was FRAUDULENT, and that Clare County Council
colluded in this fraud in accepting it as a Section Registration.
But Kildysert is in County Clare where planning is based not on fraud
but on miracles.
Miracle in Clare
A Quarry moved
i a n l u m l e y
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