Metrolink construction 'will silence the heartbeat of our community'
Na Fianna GAA club has claimed that local amenities will become a construction site of an unprecedented scale if the Dublin's first underground rail line goes ahead in its current form.
The Glasnevin sports club could lose access to some of its facilities while Metrolink is being built.
The 26km line between Swords and Sandyford is expected to take six years to complete.
Chairman of Na Fianna GAA club, Cormac O'Donnchu, is in favour of the project - but not in its current form.
"It will transform a space which has been lovingly nurtured by a generation of volunteers as a remarkable cultural and community centre into a construction site of an unprecedented scale
"It will silence the heartbeat of our local community. A generation of children will be deprived of an opportunity to engage in healthy activity in their local community during their formative years."
Local schools are also raising concerns about the impact the project will have on them.
"We have major health concerns, due to the likelihood of dust, diesel emissions, noise and vibrations - and those same factors will make effective education impossible throughout the construction," says Marcella Nic Niallaigh, principal of Scoil Mobhi primary school.
"We simply cannot understand how this proposal even came to be put forward and we cannot conceive of any way in which it could co-exist with the school.
"Uncertainty over whether this proposal will move forward dominates, and will continue to dominate, the decisions parents take now, and in the near future, about whether to send their children to or keep them at our school, Scoil Chaitríona and Tír na nOg."
Deputy CEO of the National Transport Authority Hugh Creegan was answering questions at a meeting of the Transport Committee today.
"Has a human health assessment been undertaken? Not as yet," he said.
"That's something that has to be done, you're absolutely right. That's usually done as part of what used to be called an environmental impact statement, it's now called and environmental impact assessment report, so at that stage that would have to be undertaken, and would be undertaken."
