Stars f inance battle to block plastics factory
ACADEMY award winners Jeremy Irons and David Puttnam have vowed to help finance a legal challenge to the construction of a controversial plastics factory in scenic West Cork.
The actor and filmmaker have homes close to the site of the proposed 4,931sq.m factory, which was granted planning permission by Cork County Council. An appeal by residents was rejected by An Bord Pleanála. Such is the level of opposition to the development that, in just six weeks, locals have raised €26,000 for a court battle to block the project.
The High Court in Dublin ruled this week that the Save Our Skibbereen group could take a judicial review against the planning decision. It has since emerged that Irons actor Puttnam will help finance the legal case, due before the courts in March.
Brendan McCarthy, spokesman for Save Our Skibbereen, said: ‘David Puttnam has said that he and Jeremy Irons, and three or four other people, have pledged financial support.
‘In six weeks we have raised €26,000 – all from locals. It’s phenomenal… People don’t want the factory there. The community is standing up for what is right.’
Permission was granted for the factory on what was a green-belt site before it was rezoned for business use by Cork County Council in 2017. Although the local authority was the first council in the country to support a ban on plastics, the factory will be located within a 10km radius of three outstanding beauty spots designated EU protected environments.
Irons and his actress wife Sinéad Cusack have close
‘I’ll do all I can to fight this blight’
ties to the area. Their home, the striking peach-coloured 15th-century Kilcoe Castle, is about 15km from the proposed factory site. However 77-year-old Puttnam’s restored farmhouse is much closer. He has been living on Skibbereen’s outskirts for more than a quarter of a century and he was one of hundreds to attend a public protest meeting last month. At that meeting, he predicted the factory would be the issue in the forthcoming local elections in May. He also described the development ‘as an advertiser’s nightmare’ in light of the considerable public funds spent on the international marketing campaign to attract tourists to the Wild Atlantic Way. He read aloud a message from Irons, stating: ‘I’ve already spoken about the hopeless misjudgment of inflicting the development of a plastics factory on the people of West Cork – most particularly on our children and grandchildren.
‘I’ll continue to do all I can to fight what can only become a blight on the face of one of the last few truly sustainable places on earth.’
The factory planning application was lodged in April 2017 by Daly Products Limited. The firm’s directors are Hugh Miller, Jennifer Miller and Danny Victor Miles.
The factory site is 3.7km as the crow flies from Lough Hyne, a Special Area of Conservation (SAC), and about 8.75kms from Roaringwater Bay SAC. Locals said a stream on the factory site connects to a river, which, in turn, flows into the Roaringwater Bay SAC.
A third protected environmental area known as Sheep’s Head to Toe is close by.