Moving ‘robot trees’ cost €2k, Cork City Council told

A Cork city councillor has said that no further money should be spent on the controversial ‘robot trees’ after it emerged that the council spent more than €2,000 on transporting them from the city centre to Tramore Valley Park, where they are now stored.

Figures provided at Monday’s council meeting show that it cost €366,114.29 to buy the trees in 2020, with €78,248.73 spent in the last five years on maintaining and repairing them.

Annual maintenance costs for 2020 amounted to €16,778.76; €17,755.30 in 2021; €17,880 in 2022, €8,940 in 2023, and €14,497.70 in 2024. An additional €2,396.97 was spent on repairs in 2021.

On May 18 this year, €2,214 was spent on transportation when the structures were removed and moved to storage, bringing the total cost to €446,577.02.

David Joyce, the council’s director of climate action, highlighted that Cork City Council received National Transport Authority grants totalling €409,744.94 for this project, meaning it spent €36,832.08 outside of this.

Independent Ireland’s Noel O’Flynn, to whom the costing figures were provided, told The Echo that the latest figures should be the last money ever spent on the project.

“All this money was spent on robot trees for cleaning the city centre’s air, and there was no report ever given to members on the operation, the environmental impact, or the efficiency of these devices, despite numerous requests from members over the years,” said Mr O’Flynn.

“The trees are now retired to the Tramore Valley Park, where I have no doubt they will be left to rust away and eventually be taken away for scrap.

“There should be no more money spent on these apparatuses. A line has to be drawn under them now, and we can move on.

“The sinful thing is there could have been 40 local authority houses refurbished for what was spent. It’s a huge loss of public money for a failed experiment.”