In the heady days before the commencement of lockdown, several hundred people spent about a month in the ballroom of the g Hotel for the long running and comprehensive oral hearing into the impact of the proposed Galway City Ring Road.
Sitting through it all was an arduous task, because it required an ability to be enthralled by, and to be able translate into common usage, the environmental and the ecological. Divided into different categories and time segments, anyone who had an opinion on such matters was invited to make a submission, and many did.
Arguments went this way and that and both sides in each debate were well represented. In most cases, there was a line of experts all on one side of a table; and on the other side, was normally the person making the submission and his/her friends and family for moral support.
Scattered throughout the room were pin-striped legals, keeping a watching brief on any matters that might stray into the interests of their clients. Then there were media, trying to get something for the deadline, updating on social media, bringing proceedings to those who could not be there.
Basically though, most of the people, myself included, were there because it was another gig; part of the job. Not that this should ever lessen the ability to do it fairly.
But there were many others there who were not there because it was their gig. They were there because the substance of their lives depended on it. They were there because if this decision goes a certain way, the place that they call home will no longer be theirs. Bulldozers will go through decades and decades of memories.
Carefully-tended gardens in which sapling memories were planted and grew to fruition would become part of the collateral damage of this project. These were people who had skin in the game, and who had a strong right (and perhaps even more ) to be heard as thoroughly as they were. More so than those who just wanted the new ring road so they can get to work or get home earlier, even though those stories were important as well.
At the end of the hearing (the conclusion of which was postponed until after lockdown ), we were told that a decision was due earlier this year. That deadline has passed, and now, so has another in the last few days.
I understand that there are enormous complexities to a project such as this. It is never a simple yes/no. A grant made be made with conditions; a grant may be refused; a grant may give a complete go-ahead.
This is a project that if it gets the go-ahead will cost the guts of a billion euros. The biggest ever in the west of Ireland. But it is also a project that has a human facet. It is incumbent on An Bord Pleanala that it expedites the decision, so that whichever way it goes, those affected can get on with their lives. At the moment, for many, it is like living on a volcano, enjoying the beauty but not knowing what day it will all be taken away.
