Oral hearing to be held on proposed €100m Docks project

Galway City Tribune – An Bord Pleanála is set to hold an oral hearing during the Summer into the planned €100 million new Bonham Quay office development at Galway Docks.

Six appeals were lodged with the Board against planning permission for the project, while there are four appeals against a separate application for 345 student accommodation bedrooms on an adjacent site.

The oral hearing will mean ‘sink or swim’ for the Bonham Quay project, and it looks increasingly likely that the separate student accommodation element of the scheme will be tied in to the oral hearing.

The Appeals Board has decided that the offices application is of a significant scale on a prominent site to merit an oral hearing, while a decision is yet to be made on whether the second application should form part of the hearing.

Galway City Council, which approved both applications, has made a submission to the Board asking it to uphold their decision, pointing out that the project will “further enable the city to compete internationally as a regional city and driver of growth”.

The developer, Galway businessman Gerry Barrett, previously told the Galway City Tribune that Bonham Quay is of “vital economic importance to the city’s future growth”.
For extensive coverage on the appeals, see this week’s Galway City Tribune. Buy a digital edition of this week’s paper here, or download the app for Android or iPhone.