Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council last night unanimously rejected plans for a new road linking Dundrum with Sandyford Industrial Estate.
Opponents claimed it would have severely compromised the setting of Dublin's only urban farm - the 35-acre Airfield Estate in Dundrum - as well as competing with the Sandyford Luas line, which runs directly alongside the road reservation.
About 100 protesters staged a demonstration outside County Hall in Dún Laoghaire while the meeting was in progress. Councillors on the way in were given free buns iced with "No Road!" slogans.
They had been lobbied intensively over the past three months by opponents of the road plan. Some 1,200 submissions were received, the vast bulk of them in opposition, though some support was expressed by the business community.
The owners of Dundrum shopping centre had offered to part-finance the proposal, but opponents said there were already seven roads serving the centre and another one would not make much difference to the "chronic congestion" in the area.
Director of transportation Éamon O'Hare put forward options for the road scheme, including partial completion between Sandyford and the Drumartin Link Road and referring it to An Bord Pleanála, but these were rejected.
Cllr Aidan Culhane (Labour) proposed that the road scheme be dropped, and this was agreed without dissent. "It's gone for the foreseeable future," he told The Irish Times.
Dr Susan Hood, chairwoman of the Friends of Airfield group, said: "It's wonderful to experience such unanimity in the chambers of power - and it was right across the board, among all the parties. . ."
She said the council now needed to revisit the residential zoning given to the three lower fields of the Airfield Estate "so that this unique urban farm is kept intact once and for all, as its owners intended".
The farm was bequeathed to a trust by the Overend sisters, who had lived there for decades. "It was Letitia Overend's dying wish that not one acre of Airfield would be sold," Dr Hood said. However, the trust claims that it needs to raise more money.
The new Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown county manager Owen Keegan said it would be one of his aims to achieve a better balance between conservation and development. In his first address to the council after taking office this month, Mr Keegan agreed the handling of some issues had been contentious.
