Locals calling on EU to designate Murphy's Rock an Special Area of Conservation

Locals on Cork city’s northside intend to appeal to the EU to establish as a Special Area of Conservation (SAC) a publicly owned 200-acre wetland site that is currently earmarked for partial development.

Members of the Murphy’s Rock and Bride Valley Support Group in Kilcully say the land surrounding Murphy’s Rock is an area of outstanding beauty and environmental importance that needs to be preserved for future generations.

Locals say the whole Murphy’s Rock area in Kilcully has been a green space for decades and they are calling on the EU to establish the entire area as an SAC as it is the habitat of thousands of species of animals and plants, many of them endangered.

At issue is a large site uphill from the Murphy’s Rock wetlands and to the south-east, an 18-hectare parcel of land which was previously owned by the Industrial Development Agency and is currently the property of the Land Development Agency (LDA).

In the Cork City draft development plan, it is proposed that the section of land owned by the LDA would be earmarked for development, with potentially hundreds of houses being built there.

Adjacent to the LDA land is an area of approximately 15 hectares not currently zoned for housing but marked for strategic future development as city hinterland.

In an amendment to the development plan, proposed last year by Green Party councillor Oliver Moran and passed by Cork City Council, approximately 20 hectares around the area of wetlands at Murphy’s Rock in the Glenamought Valley have now been zoned as public open space identified as a significant amenity, with a view to establishing it as a park.

Under Cllr Moran’s amendment, whatever housing which would be built on the LDA site would have to compliment and protect the value of Murphy’s Rock.

Local Protests

However, locals say the development of housing uphill from those wetlands would constitute a significant and environmentally damaging change to a beloved local amenity.

Murphy’s Rock has long been a favourite beauty spot for northsiders, and the late Cork actor and comedian Niall Tóibín famously referred to the area as “the Riviera of Cork”.

In the summers when he was young, Tóibín claimed, people with cars went to Crosshaven, “and the rest of us went to Murphy’s Rock”.

Murphy’s Rock and Bride Valley Support Group chairwoman Joan Lewis said there had been little public consultation about the council’s plans.

“Cork City Council is proposing what would be a significant development which, if it is allowed to go ahead, it would have a catastrophic effect on a place which belongs to us all, and which we all have a duty of care to protect,” Ms Lewis said.

She added that the group will appeal to the EU that the entire site be designated an SAC, noting that the Glenamought river at Murphy’s Rock, which is a tributary of the River Bride, is “absolutely pristine”, describing streams as “the lifeblood of our local environment”.

“The area around Murphy’s Rock is home to kestrels, bats, rabbits, mice, foxes, buzzards, dippers, heron, squirrels, badgers, otters, stoats, trout, lamprey, not to mention innumerable types of lichen,” she said.

Ms Lewis added that, with the exception of a small park in Ballyvolane, the nearest designated walk for the area’s estimated 10,000 residents was in Blarney.

“This is a perfect location for a regional park, which would preserve our environment, and which would give all the people of the northside the sort of public amenity we deserve,” she said.

“The area surrounding Murphy’s Rock is the last wilderness left in Cork City, and we cannot afford to lose it.”