Planning application

Dear Editor,

I would like to take issue with Tadhg O’Donovan’s letter re the above. If the Tesco application in Fermoy is unsuccessful, Mr. O’Donovan writes that “.... our town centre will remain our biggest eyesore...” It is my understanding that our town centre is based around Pearse Square, Patrick Street and the adjoining streets and lanes where we shop and meet and stand for a chat.

The town centre will indeed, I believe, be ‘an eyesore’ if the proposed development goes ahead as the smaller shops may have to close and be boarded up due to pressure from the proposed new development.

We can’t forget either Mill Island Wildlife Trail and its environs which borders on the proposed site. Pat Quinlan’s amazing photographs on the Trail signage show us the range of plants and animals that live

and frequent the area. The adjacent proposed site is overgrown with multiple species of wild grasses and flowers and inhabited by many small mammals, birds and insects which, in the current climate emergency when many species are under threat, is to be seen as very positive for our town. I wonder if we have the wherewithal and the imagination to develop this site, for ourselves and future generations, into a wild area/garden to be managed by the local people under the guidance of a person passionate about biodiversity/ecology?

We will then be preserving the area for its own sake as a place of intrinsic value full of life, rather than eradicating forever yet another of our wild refuges.

Yours, Gillian Cussen,

Kilworth.