Cork Fine Gael Deirdre Clune TD has expressed her disappointment that An Bord Pleanala has granted planning permission to the controversial co-location Hospital development on the grounds of the Cork University Hospital.

The decision (Inspector’s Report PDF 542kb & Order and Conditions PDF 69kb) favours the Fianna Fáil/Green Government’s doomed co-location hospital policy over the concerns of the local residents and An Bord Pleanála’s own inspector’s report.

An Bord Pleanála Inspector’s report expressed concerns about the scale and size of the Beacon Hospital Development and the traffic implications it would have for the Bishopstow/Wilton area. The conditions An Bord Pleanála has put on their planning approval do little to address these concerns.

Local residents will now be left with the chronic traffic congestion that will result from this development and the 223 car parking spaces it will bring into the area. This residential suburb of Cork is already a traffic black-spot and this will now be made worse. The concerns of local residents have fallen upon deaf ears.

Local Fianna Fáil and Green politicians have tried desperately to distance themselves from what is the Government’s doomed policy of hospital co-location. Some will be happy now to hide behind the An Bord Pleanála decision rather than take responsibility for the policy that led to this decision.

Fianna Fáil and Green politicians who say one thing to the media in Cork and vote the opposite way in Leinster House are of no benefit to the people of Wilton and Bishopstown.