A community group has begun crowdfunding for a High Court challenge against planning secured by the Cork County GAA Board for a large housing scheme on a cherished amenity site on the northside of Cork city.

The scheme’s potential impact on a rare species of butterfly, bats, and otters will form part of its legal challenge.

The Kilbarry Preservation Group wants to save the landbank in Kilbarry, which includes an area known locally as Murphy’s Rock, from residential development, which got the green light from An Coimisiún
Pleanála last year.

The group says the Murphy’s Rock area, off the Old Whitechurch Road and behind Delaney’s GAA Club, has been used for generations as a recreation area, and is an area of great biodiversity and natural beauty, with 12 protected species and two endangered species listed on the National Biodiversity Database for the site.

In July 2022, a planning application was lodged with An Coimisiún Pleanála on behalf of Cork County GAA Board for a strategic housing development of 319 units on the landbank.

The scheme includes 85 semi-detached four- and three-bedroom homes, 118 terraced four-, three- and two-bed units, 53 one-, two- and three-bedroom duplex units, and 63 apartments in three part four-storey and part five-storey blocks, to include 15 one-bed units and 48 two-bed units.

It includes a creche and a riverside amenity park to the north and northeast of the site, and requires the demolition of a disused hurley factory and other out-buildings, the creation of “formalised walking paths” to the north of the site, a new through road from the proposed site access on the Old Whitechurch Road to Delaney’s GAA grounds, with new boundary treatments in places.

Cork City Council recommended planning be refused, citing the lack of usable public open space, non-compliance with key principles in road design manuals, and the over-provision of car parking.

The council also said the applicant had not demonstrated to its satisfaction the proposed development would not impact negatively on the environment, and in particular on protected and at-risk species. including the marsh fritillary butterfly and some rare fungi.

But in its ruling in July 2024, the board agreed with its inspector and said subject to compliance with a range of conditions, the proposed development would not seriously injure the residential or visual amenities of the area or of property in the area, that it would be acceptable in terms of urban design, height and scale of development, and would be acceptable in terms of traffic and pedestrian safety and convenience.

Among the conditions were measures to protect the marsh fritillary and rare fungi.

But the Kilbarry Preservation Group has engaged solicitors FP Logue to take this decision to the High Court, by way of a judicial review that can only consider shortfalls in the process.

The key issues that will be pursued will include the design of roads in the scheme, an alleged failure to adequately address biodiversity, including the marsh fritillary, rare fungi noted in the area, and otters, an alleged failure to address run-off from the land into the Glenamought river, which runs into the Bride, and an alleged failure to adequately address roosting bats, including leisler, common pipistrelle and soprano pipistrelle species.