HSE management has identified Shantalla Park as its preferred location for a new state-of-the-art aeromedical base for the west of Ireland.
Saolta, the organisation which runs hospitals across the west and northwest, is expected to offer a corridor of land through its University Hospital Galway campus in return for three acres of Shantalla Park to build a heliport on.
This corridor would become a continuation of the Cross-City Link project, granted planning permission last autumn, to provide 4km of new bus, cycling and pedestrian infrastructure between College Road and the University of Galway.
It is not yet clear if the HSE is proposing the bus corridor next to the heliport, or through the northern end of UHG’s campus to link the Browne Roundabout with the hospital’s former side entrance on Newcastle Avenue.
Sources close to the negotiations said the HSE is also expected to offer funds to the City Council to be ring fenced for improving community facilities and green spaces in Shantalla, likely to be a children’s playground.
The sale, purchase or exchange of local authority land is a reserved function of its elected members, and city councillors will ultimately be asked to approve, reject or possibly amend any deal struck between city officials and the HSE.
Around 25 Shantalla residents staged a protest outside City Hall on Monday ahead of the helipad issue being raised at at the June meeting of the Galway City Council.
The sense within the chamber was that although all city councillors deplore the loss of public green space in the city centre, a majority may emerge which approves a transfer to the HSE for emergency aeromedical infrastructure which benefits the entire west of Ireland. A vote is expected later in the summer.
Speaking after the meeting, city centre Councillor John McDonagh (Lab ) warned that local residents may lose up to 4.6 acres of the six-acre Shantalla Park if a helipad and bus corridor are built on it.
“I urge all councillors to vote ‘no’. We cannot allow 75 per cent of a neighbourhood’s park to disappear [agreed] behind closed doors. Once it’s gone, it’s gone forever,” he said.
Protesters pointed out that the Shantalla Park pitch is leased to Galway Bohemians AFC, and was previously leased to Galway United Women’s FC. A number of residents called on the council to check records of historic bequests of land to the people of Galway, as there is folk memory in Shantalla of open land - formerly referred to as Kirwan’s Park - being donated two centuries ago by the Eyre family in perpetuity, for the “health” of Galway city residents.
