A teary-eyed Joe Colwell confirmed the intention that Shamrock Rovers will play their first game at their new home at Sean Walsh Park in Tallaght next September after the club was given the go-ahead to develop the site after a meeting of South Dublin County Council yesterday.

The club must give two weeks' official notice before work on the new ground can commence. The club must also seek new tenders for the project, the first phase of which will cost in the region of £2 million.

Councillors at yesterday's meeting voted by 22 to four in favour of allowing Rovers to use a piece of land near the stadium site as a carpark. That meant that the club was finally in a position to meet An Bord Pleanala's stipulation that 800 spaces be provided before the stadium is opened, effectively setting aside the last major obstacle to the commencement of construction work.

As the number of elected officials indicating their support for the proposal passed the 14 mark in a roll call, voices inside the chamber were briefly drowned out by the cheers of Rovers supporters outside who had been unable to secure seats in the public gallery.

Afterwards an emotional Colwell welcomed the news as "great for a club that has been on the road for so long. We are delighted that we are going to be able to pursue our dream and for that we want to thank all of the people of Tallaght. Now we are getting down to the work of bringing a great football club to a great town."

Considerably outnumbered by the club's supporters, opponents of the proposed stadium were clearly disappointed by the decision, although Frank McCarthy, principal of the Old Bawn Community School which has been at the heart of the dispute, left the council building without talking to the media, and Sean Walsh Action Group chairman Sean Hennessy declined to comment as he departed.

Back in the chamber, Sinn Fein councillor Mark Daly, a former pupil at the school and an opponent of the project who had abided by a mandate from his local party members to support the club, said that he still felt the decision taken had been wrong.

"I don't think the stadium will be stopped now, though," he said, "and so I hope that some sort of structures can be put in place to monitor what is being done. Some mechanism should be put in place to ensure that if the school is being unduly disrupted then something can be done about it."

Daly said that he believed that the proposal had been "railroaded through" and that many councillors had voted to allow it to go ahead, despite serious reservations, only because the previous council had gone so far down the road with it.

Certainly, Daly's call that the proposal be debated by council members before any vote fell on deaf ears yesterday. He and his fellow councillors did spend the best part of an hour debating whether to debate the issue, but in the end they paused only to hear the advice of the council's law officer, Adrian O'Gorman, regarding the possible ramifications of a refusal to allow Rovers to go ahead before opting to proceed directly to a vote.

Club officials, however, were interpreting the fact that only four councillors - Joanna Tuffy and Eamonn Maloney (both Labour), and John Hannon and Ann Ormonde (both Fianna Fail) - then voted against them as an indication of the underlying level of goodwill towards their move.

"It's a far more positive outcome than we'd even dared to hope for," said first team manager Damien Richardson. "We suffered a bit waiting for the 14 votes to come in, but then as the councillors kept going our way I think we were all filled with renewed confidence about the whole venture.

"Shamrock Rovers will reap enormous benefits from this move but so will Tallaght, and I hope that in time those people who have opposed the stadium can be won over too, because I really feel that this can be something that is good for everybody concerned."

Don Tipping, the Labour Party councillor who proposed yesterday's motion, also welcomed the resolution of what has been a long and drawn out process.

"I think the issue of the stadium was decided a long time ago and so I'm glad that the issue of the car park, which is all we were voting on here, is finally sorted out, because now the club can finally get on with the move.

"I understand that earlier today members of the Action Group approached Rovers with a view to sitting down and talking, which is good news too, and hopefully over the coming weeks all of the parties can resolve their differences and lie as good neighbours.

If that happens then I think this can be remembered as a very positive day for the area."