‘They are killing our community’: Over 40 homes face demolition for Galway ring road

Marie O’Donovan holds back tears as she recalls how both of her parents were laid out during their respective wakes in her home that is to be sacrificed to make way for the proposed Galway city ring road.

It is 13 years since she received confirmation that her memory-filled detached house – built by her father in 1976 on School Road, Castlegar, on the outskirts of Galway city – was needed by the State. She has been “in limbo” since, due to legal and planning delays to the road project.

“They’re not just taking our homes, they are killing our community,” says O’Donovan about the road’s impact on Castlegar, one of the city’s few remaining rural and Gaeltacht areas.

Of the 54 houses to be acquired to facilitate the new road, 44 will be demolished.

O’Donovan’s is one of 10 that will be bought because of its proximity to the 18km road’s route, stretching from the M6 motorway at Coolagh roundabout to a point west of Bearna village.

Even if her property’s foundations survived the rock-breaking necessary to build the road, it was determined her house would be “unlivable” due to light, noise and traffic pollution generated by the six-lane carriageway planned to be constructed just metres away.

O’Donovan is 67. Her husband Denis is 73. Their adult children are fourth-generation Castlegar.

Instead of enjoying retirement, the couple worry about where they will live out the rest of their days.

Neighbours aged in their 70s and 80s are said to have suffered panic attacks and sleepless nights. “It’s very stressful,” says O’Donovan.

Galway County Council, which is leading the project in conjunction with Galway City Council and Transport Infrastructure Ireland, began voluntary acquisition negotiations with homeowners in September.

Galway West TD and Minister of State Noel Grealish welcomed the move. “It means owners, a lot of them elderly, can opt now to sell immediately, or many will be able to take the option of getting most of the money up front and staying in their homes for some time until they get alternatives sorted out or until the construction work is about to start in their area,” he said.

Construction could start next year. Planning permission for the project was granted in April. Four judicial reviews challenging the decision were launched, but three of these cases, taken by affected homeowners, have been settled.

Galway County Council refused to elaborate on the agreements reached other than to say legal proceedings have “concluded to its satisfaction”.

A fourth challenge, by cycling campaigner Shane Foran, proceeds in November. He will argue there was a failure to do a lawful or correct assessment of traffic impacts associated with the new road.

Foran claims it will bring “significant traffic increases” to residential areas “with no apparent assessment of impacts for vulnerable road users or design changes” on roads without cycle lanes.

He also questions whether environmental-impact assessments for the ring road took adequate account of intensified heavy goods vehicle traffic associated with an expanded Galway harbour, which got planning permission on the same day as the road.

Meanwhile, the county council said it continues “constructive engagement” with residents on an early acquisition scheme.

“The project team has been meeting with property owners to provide information, address individual concerns and support residents in considering the options available to them,” said Uinsinn Finn, director of services at Galway County Council.

O’Donovan welcomed the voluntary acquisition process and will engage with it but bluntly told Grealish in a recent meeting that what she and her neighbours have endured over 13 years amounts to “elder abuse”.

She urged the State to work with families affected in Castlegar to source a site to build an estate for them to relocate and live together as neighbours.

She feels high-profile property acquisitions associated with Dublin’s metro project fuelled a false public perception that homeowners affected by the ring road will be adequately looked after.

[ Owners of 40 Dublin apartments agree to sell homes to MetroLink for close to €550k eachOpens in new window ]

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“Everyone thinks we’re going to be millionaires; we’re not. The process is stacked in favour of the Government,” she says.

O’Donovan’s home, and particularly her garden, where she grows vegetables, are her pride and joy. She feels she will leave under duress and wants sufficient compensation for a like-for-like property and garden in Galway.

“All we want is fairness. We are not leaving until we are satisfied. Are they going to bring the Army in to drag us out?”

News of the commencement of voluntary land acquisitions coincidentally came around the same time An Coimisiún Pleanála (ACP) closed its file on Gluas – or the Galway Luas – a setback to what had been pitched as an alternative to the ring road, 17 years after the light rail system was formally proposed.

The commission confirmed that it closed its pre-application consultation on Gluas with Trampower, a British company involved in Manchester’s metro system that promotes light rail technology.

A large file at ACP’s headquarters on Marlborough Street, Dublin 1, shows extensive engagement between Trampower and what was then An Bord Pleanála in 2009 and 2010.

Trampower proposed two light rail tram lines linking Cappagh Road, Bearna, to the west of Galway city, with Briarhill Shopping Centre at Coolagh to the east.

The proposal said the system would be powered by wind energy and “hydroelectric power from the river Corrib”.

The newly released file reveals that the planning authority reminded Trampower in August 2015 that consultation was “in abeyance” since 2012.

ACP wrote to Trampower again last August to advise that it was 13 years since they had received correspondence from the company and 15 years since they last met. As such, ACP concluded that “the request to enter into pre-application consultations is no longer being actively pursued”.

“Should you wish to proceed with the project at some stage in the future it will be necessary for you to make a new pre-application consultation request,” ACP said.

In response, Prof Lewis Lesley of Trampower told ACP, in a letter contained in the planning file, that “interest in the Gluas project has not evaporated”.

Lesley pointed to a 2024 National Transport Authority feasibility study that concluded there “could, under the right conditions, be a case for” developing a Galway Luas.

He urged ACP to retain its file open, “to expedite a project that will help to accommodate a growing population, reduce congestion and toxic air pollution [and] provide visitors with an acceptable means of movement” in Galway.

Retailer Brendan Holland, a member of the local Gluas committee, said his group still meets regularly and continues to lobby for light rail in Galway.

Meanwhile, for Connemara businesspeople such as Declan Mannion, a Clifden accountant and publican, Galway’s ring road cannot come quickly enough.

Mannion says Clifden’s “remoteness is one of its challenges but it’s part of its charm”, and businesses there feel “very bitter” about objectors to the road.

“Everyone from Connemara, if they have to go anywhere, has to go through Galway [city]. What are you going to do, go north of Lough Corrib, into Mayo, to get round it?

“And if Galway isn’t [your] destination, we are adding to the traffic problems in Galway. The ring road is going to be a game changer.”