Dublin City Council is to hold an extraordinary meeting today to decide whether to give the developers of the 50,000-seater Lansdowne Road stadium a half-acre strip of land essential for the construction of the stadium.
The meeting of the council's south east area committee has been called under pressure from the Lansdowne Road Stadium Development Company (LRSDC) which needs an urgent decision on the land to allow building to get under way.
LRSDC requires the closure of the Dart for two weekends to allow for demolition and construction work. Under an agreement reached with Iarnród Éireann these closures can only take place on two bank holiday weekends when the service is at its least busy.
LRSDC had initially targeted the St Patrick's Day and Easter weekends for the work, but was not granted planning permission for the stadium in time. Bord Pleanála finally granted permission on March 22nd last.
The proposal to transfer the land, which is a section of the River Dodder walkway, to LRSDC must be agreed by the councillors from the southeast area and then ratified by the full council.
The proposal was put before the south east area committee at its last monthly meeting on April 2nd, however they decided to defer the decision to their next meeting on May 14th, because LRSDC had not negotiated a compensation package for residents living nearest the stadium.
The deferral would have meant that the decision could not be ratified by the full council until its meeting on June 7th, causing LRSDC to miss the May and June bank holidays, and making the August and October weekends the earliest possible opportunities for the construction work.
LRSDC has told the council that it cannot countenance such delays, which would put its schedule back by several months. The southeast councillors have, in a rare break with protocol, agreed to meet today on the basis that LRSDC is making progress in negotiations with the affected residents in the O'Connell Gardens Boundary Group.
It is understood that the current compensation offer to each of the 21 residents in the group whose houses will be overshadowed by the stadium is €75,000.
The council management has recommended that councillors hand over the Dodder land in exchange for river improvement works costing not less than €1.5 million. The southeast councillors are likely to agree the terms of the transfer today, but to recommend that the full council does not ratify the deal until the compensation package for residents is finalised.
