Residents Left Unheard as Council Hands GNÓ Our Green Space

Outcry grows as outside developers plan to demolish last open land in east Baile.

For the past seven years, Violet Marks has walked her dog across the scrubland on Dronn Street every morning. Last Thursday night, the council voted to hand the land to a retail giant, and nobody asked her what she thought. 

GNÓ Group, an out of town corporation with 33 retail sites across the country, plans to demolish 4.7 acres of open land on Baile’s eastern edge of town and replace it with a shopping complex. The scheme was approved without a single vote of dissent, despite more than 65 residents packing into the council chamber to voice their opposition.

“They didn’t listen. They had already decided. We were just there to make it look like a consultation.”

– Violet Marks, Dronn St. resident

“They didn’t listen,” Marks said outside the chambers after the vote. “They had already decided. We were just there to make it look like a consultation.”

Local shopkeeper Claire Wright, who has run a family-owned convenience store in the nearby square for eleven years, fears she will not survive the competition. “GNÓ will undercut everyone,” she said. “When they move in, stores like mine close down. I’ve watched it happen in Scoil and Obair. I feel like I’m next.”

What the Council Didn’t Mention

Council leader Jude Lynch reported the project would create 180 jobs. What she did not say was that GNÓ’s standard employment model relies heavily on zero-hour contracts, a detail buried in the company’s published workforce data. We submitted a freedom of information request to establish how many of those positions would be full-time and permanent. THe council has yet to respond.

“GNÓ will undercut everyone. When they move in, shops like mine close down.”

– Claire Wright, local shopkeeper

Parents at Baile Primary, located less than half a mile from the proposed site entrance, have written to the council expressing alarm about the proposed traffic arrangements. The school’s governing body submitted a formal objection noting that delivery lorries would be routed along the same road used for the school’s morning drop-off. That objection, like many others, was overruled.

Campaigners from the newly formed Baile Open Spaces group say they will challenge the decision and are seeking legal advice on whether the planning process was correctly followed. “This land belongs to the community,” said group co-founder Gerard Max. “It has never been built on, it is used by hundreds of residents every week, and it is being taken from us without meaningful consultation.”

For Violet Marks, the decision feels like a betrayal. “Once it’s gone, it’s gone,” she said, pulling her coat against the wind on a stretch of scrubland that, come fall, will no longer exist. “You can’t un-build a parking lot.”