Wednesday 14 November 2007

Hodson Bay owner likely to oppose Lough Ree abstraction plans

THE OWNER of the Hodson Bay Hotel has indicated that he and others in the tourism sector in the Midlands region are likely to oppose plans by Dublin City Council to extract water from Lough Ree.

Midlands's businessman John O'Sullivan, who owns the Lough Ree-based Hodson Bay Hotel, told the Roscommon Herald that it was likely that tourism businesses in the region would be opposed to plans to abstract water from Lough Ree.

"I'm quite sure that anybody who is involved in tourism in the Midlands would have concerns about water extraction from Lough Ree and I'm quite sure that I'll be strong on the team of don't do it," Mr O'Sullivan told the Roscommon Herald.

Mr O'Sullivan added, however, that the water abstraction proposals may not pose as serious a threat as presently perceived and that it all came down to "quantums". "Having said that I have no idea what the actual merits of doing it or not doing it are or how serious the consequences are of doing it. It may well be that the consequences are not as serious as we think because the Shannon goes up every year and goes down every year, so even if they didn't take it to Dublin it is going to flow out at Ardnacrusha anyway. So it may well be that it's not quite as serious; it's about the quantums that they take out, I think," he added.

Either way, Mr O'Sullivan said, that it was likely that anyone involved in tourism in the region would be out to battle against the proposals

Roscommon Herald

www.buckplanning.ie

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