BREWING GIANT DIAGEO’S plans for a new €200 million brewery on a green field site outside Newbridge are being stalled by a Co Kildare man who believes that the brewery should instead be built in Athy.

This follows sole objector to the proposal, Athy man, John Lynch lodging an appeal with An Bord Pleanála against the Kildare County Council decision to grant planning permission for the project last month.

The new brewery is to provide a major jobs boost to the Kildare area providing up to 1,000 jobs during the 20 month construction period and will lead to the creation of a further 70 jobs when operational.

The new facility, which will operate 24 hours per day, 365 days a year, is to brew lagers and ales including Rockshore, Harp, Hop House 13, Smithwick’s, Kilkenny and Carlsberg.

When fully operational with a capacity of 2m hectolitres, the brewery will be the second largest brewing operation in Ireland after Diageo’s operation at St James’s Gate and support the future growth of Diageo Ireland’s beer brands.

Lynch of Cloney, Athy stated that the proposal for Littleconnell should be rejected and be built instead in Athy on environmental grounds.

In the opening sentence in his original objection lodged with the Council, Lynch stated that he wished on behalf of all the grandchildren of the world and all the babies in the womb of pregnant women to object in the strongest possible way to the proposed brewery at Littleconnell.

Lynch said that if there was ever a competition for a future brewery site of this scale in this country, Athy “would win out by miles from a financial point of view”.

He said that he was now calling for planning permission to be refused and for Diageo “to seriously consider Athy as the most environmentally friendly and profitable location for a brewery of this size”.

Lynch said that former President, Mary Robinson and UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres in their recent statements on climate charge are “the two world visionaries” who are his inspiration in opposing the Diageo brewery at Littleconnell.

Lynch said that he has no vested interest in the case but stated that “our grand-children will perish prematurely if we do not take care of our environment every single day by every single person in the world”.

He stated that the proposed brewery is very welcome to south Kildare “but it is in the wrong location from a climate change and environmental point of view”.

Lynch contended that the brewery should be built in Athy – The Malting Barley Capital of Ireland – in order to save 833 lorry loads of malt to be transported from Athy to Littleconnell per year for the next 263 years to come thereby creating millions of tonnes of carbon emissions un-necessarily over the lifetime of this proposed brewery.

He stated that if the brewery was built in Athy, Diageo would save more than €6.664 million per year on the costs of transport.

Lynch further stated that the site is very close to the M7 motorway where more than a ‘million wheels’ pass by every day and there is a real risk of pollution by atomised airborne rubber dust particles from the prevailing wind at this site.

Advancing the Athy case for the location of the brewery, Lynch said that Athy has a train station with Diageo’s St James’s Gate is only 45 minutes away and that the town has the highest employment in Co Kildare with a long history of malting barley supplying.

A decision is due to be made by An Bord Pleanála in August but due to the current case backlog it is likely to be at some date after 28 August.