This article is from page 61 of the 2008-08-26 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 61 JPG
A COUPLE have told An Bord Pleanala that the spread of a quarry towards their home must be stopped in order to preserve their sanity. Earlier this year, Clare County Council granted planning to Mc- Grath Quarries to extend its business for another 30 years with a rock re- serve of seven million cubic metres. The move to extend the operation
by 45 acres comes with the company in a very strong financial position.
The most recent accounts to the Companies Office by McGrath (O’Callaghan Mills) Ltd show that the company’s retained profits at the end of March 2006 stood at €5.4 million.
However, the couple, Patrick and Maureen Minogue, living nearest to the multi-million euro quarrying op- eration in east Clare have appealed
to An Bord Pleanala.
In the appeal, they state, ““We have lived in our home since 1975 and the quarry was operational at the time we purchased the home, but at a significantly reduced scale. The quarry area was also a considerable distance…we obviously did not en- visage that the scale of quarrying at the site would develop to its present AoE
“Be that as it may, we do not ob-
ject to the quarrying operation, per se, and accept that the quarry exists at this location. Our main reason for appealing the permission is to main- tain a separation distance between our home and the quarry operation and to protect our water supply
“We submit that taking account of the noise impact associated with drilling, rock breaking haul trucks and their horns, blast vibration, dust emission during blasting, drilling
and hauling — we seek to establish a 250 metre buffer zone between our property and the active quarry area. “We object to the extension area and to the removal of the existing mature trees in this area to protect the integrity of our dwelling, our amenity and our sanity and retain the value of the dwelling. We believe the only realistic way to do this is to condition this separation in clear un- ambiguous terms in the permission.