*Photograph: Joe Buckley
MULTI-MILLIONAIRE Pat McDonagh has said the long-running battle to open The Banner Plaza has been one of the most challenging projects of his career.
Nine years after first submitting plans to construct a motorway service station on the outskirts of Ennis, McDonagh had a smile on his face as The Banner Plaza opened to the public on Friday, creating 120 new jobs in the process.
Bogus letters of support, withdrawn plans, revised applications and judicial reviews have been part of the drama accompanying the efforts over the last decade to construct the Plaza with costs rising to over €18m.
Speaking to The Clare Echo, Supermac’s MD McDonagh admitted this venture was among the most challenging since he founded the fast food company in 1978. “Fourteen years is a long time in the project and process. There’s times you say what am I doing wrong or what is the point but I always knew this was a very good site because I know it from being in Ennis and going to Limerick, I always knew there was a need for something here. The greater need of the community has to overcome the need of the objector because in any project it is the community and people’s needs that should come first not somebody that is objecting for the sake of objecting or not because we are asked for X amount and to follow objections, it is a different game that we are now compared to twenty or thirty years ago when we started off but something will have to be done with it otherwise Ireland will stagnate”.
On planning alone, costs for the Banner Plaza have hit €2m he confirmed. “The costs have escalated, we built the Obama Plaza a year after we bought here, the costs of construction have gone up by eighty percent in the meantime, the costs of planning for this alone between judicial reviews and An Bord Pleanála is escalating from year to year, the cost of planning alone was about €2m and it is continuing to grow. It is worth it, anything that you can have a vision for and a team with you that will aim to achieve the same result is great. Thanks to all our own team and our own construction team who did this job in a record time of 34 weeks despite all the obstacles along the way even when we started construction, we still got here on time”.
Given that it took 34 weeks for his team to construct the entire Plaza, it was put to him that his team may have been a better choice for finishing the €2.24bn National Children’s Hospital which has failed to meet its deadline on fifteen occasions and is now most likely to treat patients in June 2026. “When you have a project, a vision and a great team behind you then you can achieve almost anything, that is what we had here. This team has been with us for the last three or four projects so they know what they are doing, they are working together and there wasn’t a cross word on site for the whole development”.
Friday’s unofficial opening brought huge crowds to Doora and was quietly announced on social media in the days prior. “We opened because we were ready, it is simple as that, we don’t wait for an official opening, when the job is ready we open it, we were lucky that the weather was good for the most part of the summer, great credit is due to our own guys and to the whole team,” McDonagh stated.
He commented, “It is up and running today, there are a few more bits of work to be done but it will be over the next couple of weeks and then we’ll be happy with it then, we’re happy with it at the moment, it will be an official opening then not an unofficial opening”.
