We need your help now
Support from readers like you keeps The Journal open.
You are visiting us because we have something you value. Independent, unbiased news that tells the truth. Advertising revenue goes some way to support our mission, but this year it has not been enough.
If you've seen value in our reporting, please contribute what you can, so we can continue to produce accurate and meaningful journalism. For everyone who needs it.
Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
By continuing, you are indicating that you accept our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.
RECENTLY, FORA HAS taken a look at some of the more notable big-ticket projects that were floated during the Celtic Tiger period – or in the aftermath of its demise.
In the last installment, we detailed the story behind Arnotts’ €750 million plan to create Dublin’s ‘premier’ shopping street.
The properties owned by the store, which was nearly bankrupted in the crash by its investment binge, were sold to Galway-born solicitor Noel Smyth, who now has his own development plans.
In this edition, we’re moving a little farther to Dublin’s north to look at what was surely one of the most outlandish boom-time proposals, the idea to build a gigantic theme park in the town of Lusk.
What was it?
The plan to build ‘Vega City’ was a wildly ambitious one. A consortium, headed by developer Louis Maguire junior, wanted to build a €7 billion theme park on a site of more than 2,000 acres in Lusk, a little over 10km away from Dublin airport.
With that footprint, it would have filled a bigger area than Dublin’s Phoenix Park to become one of the largest theme parks in Europe, bigger than Disneyland Paris.
It was planned that the facility would also have a Disneyland-style layout, including a safari park and rides, and would be centred on a large lake for water activities.
Vega City was also meant to include 14 hotels, 10,000 apartments, a huge conference centre and the world’s longest monorail.
It was estimated that the facility would employ 25,000 people, draw in 34 million tourists from around the world annually, take about a decade to build and be the single biggest construction project ever undertaken in the Republic.
It was later revealed that O’Callaghan Properties, run by the respected developer Owen O’Callaghan, was one of three potential backers of the project.
The identities of the other two were not revealed – something that would prove to be a sticking point later on – although it was thought that they were not from Ireland.
When was it first suggested?
The plans were first made public in 2003, although they were likely in the works before then.
What happened?
The project was at an aspirational stage when it was first made public, and the consortium behind it didn’t even own a lot of the land that the park was meant to be built on.
The Irish Times reported in August 2003 that Louis Maguire was in discussions with landowners within the proposed zone and was offering up to €115,000 per acre of agricultural land, an extraordinary sum even during the boom.
In November, the local council, Fingal, agreed to a special meeting with the consortium to discuss the plans.
The consortium said that if the council agreed in principle to support the project, it would start buying the land it needed with a view to pulling together a full planning application.
Maguire didn’t reveal the identity of the international investors behind the project, but he claimed that around €2.5 billion had already been secured to progress with the first phase.
However, councillors and officials were largely unimpressed. The council’s director of planning, David O’Connor, pointed out that the sheer enormity of the project would be “just impossible to accommodate in the country, let alone this area”.
For example, it would see a total of 60 million passengers passing through Dublin Airport a year, compared to Heathrow which has 53 million passengers a year,” he was quoted by the Irish Times as saying in November 2003.
At this point, O’Callaghan was heading up the consortium’s company for the project, United Entertainment Partners.
He said that the plans were preliminary and added that the consortium had not compiled a full planning permission proposal as it would cost in the region of €10 million, and it did not want to “take the risk” of doing so at this stage.
Regardless, in a report issued shortly afterwards, council planning officials said that Vega City would have breached existing development plans, caused major traffic congestion and was likely to be economically unsustainable.
The planning officials recommended that the project be rejected and councillors voted against supporting it by a margin of 19 to 1, fatally wounding the project before it was ever anything more than an idea.
Maguire said at the time: ”Look at what Disneyland did for Orlando, with well-paid jobs, a lovely environment and making kids and people smile.
“I’m very upset that it is being rejected by some people. To shoot it down now is very sad.”
What’s the latest?
There was little heard from the consortium after the council rejected the project.
As one of Ireland’s biggest developers, O’Callaghan moved on to build plenty of other large-scale projects in the following years, such as Cork’s Mahon shopping centre.
Maguire resurfaced years later when his investment company, United Entertainment Partners, planned to build a hotel in the Montenegrin town of Kotor, a project which also eventually stalled.
Several other outlandish proposals were floated for the land, including in a November 2006 report from the Fingal Independent which said that a “wealthy Irish businessman” wanted to develop a new €1.5 billion airport runway and local terminal to service Dublin Airport.
There have also been several proposals to build waste facilities in the area. In 2011, Fingal County Council gave up on plans to develop a massive sewage treatment plant at nearby Nevitt after strong objections from locals.
Years later, in 2015, more than 600 people formally lodged an objection to controversial plans to build a waste-to-energy treatment plant at Regeens in Lusk. However, this plan was also defeated and much of the land proposed for Vega City still lies undeveloped.
Written by Paul O’Donoghue and posted on Fora.ie
Use precise geolocation data. Actively scan device characteristics for identification. Store and/or access information on a device. Personalised advertising and content, advertising and content measurement, audience research and services development.
These cookies are necessary for the website to function and cannot be switched off in our systems. They are usually only set in response to actions made by you which amount to a request for services, such as setting your privacy preferences, logging in or filling in forms. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not then work.
These cookies may be set through our site by our advertising partners. They may be used by those companies to build a profile of your interests and show you relevant adverts on other sites. They do not store directly personal information, but are based on uniquely identifying your browser and internet device. If you do not allow these cookies, you will experience less targeted advertising.
These cookies enable the website to provide enhanced functionality and personalisation. They may be set by us or by third party providers whose services we have added to our pages. If you do not allow these cookies then these services may not function properly.
These cookies allow us to count visits and traffic sources so we can measure and improve the performance of our site. They help us to know which pages are the most and least popular and see how visitors move around the site. All information these cookies collect is aggregated and therefore anonymous. If you do not allow these cookies we will not be able to monitor our performance.
Cookies, device or similar online identifiers (e.g. login-based identifiers, randomly assigned identifiers, network based identifiers) together with other information (e.g. browser type and information, language, screen size, supported technologies etc.) can be stored or read on your device to recognise it each time it connects to an app or to a website, for one or several of the purposes presented here.
Advertising presented to you on this service can be based on limited data, such as the website or app you are using, your non-precise location, your device type or which content you are (or have been) interacting with (for example, to limit the number of times an ad is presented to you).
Information about your activity on this service (such as forms you submit, content you look at) can be stored and combined with other information about you (for example, information from your previous activity on this service and other websites or apps) or similar users. This is then used to build or improve a profile about you (that might include possible interests and personal aspects). Your profile can be used (also later) to present advertising that appears more relevant based on your possible interests by this and other entities.
Advertising presented to you on this service can be based on your advertising profiles, which can reflect your activity on this service or other websites or apps (like the forms you submit, content you look at), possible interests and personal aspects.
Information about your activity on this service (for instance, forms you submit, non-advertising content you look at) can be stored and combined with other information about you (such as your previous activity on this service or other websites or apps) or similar users. This is then used to build or improve a profile about you (which might for example include possible interests and personal aspects). Your profile can be used (also later) to present content that appears more relevant based on your possible interests, such as by adapting the order in which content is shown to you, so that it is even easier for you to find content that matches your interests.
Content presented to you on this service can be based on your content personalisation profiles, which can reflect your activity on this or other services (for instance, the forms you submit, content you look at), possible interests and personal aspects. This can for example be used to adapt the order in which content is shown to you, so that it is even easier for you to find (non-advertising) content that matches your interests.
Information regarding which advertising is presented to you and how you interact with it can be used to determine how well an advert has worked for you or other users and whether the goals of the advertising were reached. For instance, whether you saw an ad, whether you clicked on it, whether it led you to buy a product or visit a website, etc. This is very helpful to understand the relevance of advertising campaigns.
Information regarding which content is presented to you and how you interact with it can be used to determine whether the (non-advertising) content e.g. reached its intended audience and matched your interests. For instance, whether you read an article, watch a video, listen to a podcast or look at a product description, how long you spent on this service and the web pages you visit etc. This is very helpful to understand the relevance of (non-advertising) content that is shown to you.
Reports can be generated based on the combination of data sets (like user profiles, statistics, market research, analytics data) regarding your interactions and those of other users with advertising or (non-advertising) content to identify common characteristics (for instance, to determine which target audiences are more receptive to an ad campaign or to certain contents).
Information about your activity on this service, such as your interaction with ads or content, can be very helpful to improve products and services and to build new products and services based on user interactions, the type of audience, etc. This specific purpose does not include the development or improvement of user profiles and identifiers.
Content presented to you on this service can be based on limited data, such as the website or app you are using, your non-precise location, your device type, or which content you are (or have been) interacting with (for example, to limit the number of times a video or an article is presented to you).
With your acceptance, your precise location (within a radius of less than 500 metres) may be used in support of the purposes explained in this notice.
With your acceptance, certain characteristics specific to your device might be requested and used to distinguish it from other devices (such as the installed fonts or plugins, the resolution of your screen) in support of the purposes explained in this notice.
Your data can be used to monitor for and prevent unusual and possibly fraudulent activity (for example, regarding advertising, ad clicks by bots), and ensure systems and processes work properly and securely. It can also be used to correct any problems you, the publisher or the advertiser may encounter in the delivery of content and ads and in your interaction with them.
Certain information (like an IP address or device capabilities) is used to ensure the technical compatibility of the content or advertising, and to facilitate the transmission of the content or ad to your device.
Information about your activity on this service may be matched and combined with other information relating to you and originating from various sources (for instance your activity on a separate online service, your use of a loyalty card in-store, or your answers to a survey), in support of the purposes explained in this notice.
In support of the purposes explained in this notice, your device might be considered as likely linked to other devices that belong to you or your household (for instance because you are logged in to the same service on both your phone and your computer, or because you may use the same Internet connection on both devices).
Your device might be distinguished from other devices based on information it automatically sends when accessing the Internet (for instance, the IP address of your Internet connection or the type of browser you are using) in support of the purposes exposed in this notice.
The choices you make regarding the purposes and entities listed in this notice are saved and made available to those entities in the form of digital signals (such as a string of characters). This is necessary in order to enable both this service and those entities to respect such choices.
have your say