Council approves Apple car park expansion as report cites lack of Cork transport
Gordon Deegan
Cork City Council has approved 285 extra car parking spaces at Apple's European headquarters to help facilitate an additional 1,300 new employees at the campus this year.
The council has attached 22 conditions to the planning permission to Apple Operations International Ltd (AOIL) for the additional car park spaces on land banks it owns to the north of David McCarthy Road on the northside of Cork city.
Consultants for Apple, DBFL Consulting Engineers, told the council that the number of employees is expected to reach 5,350 across the entire Apple Campus at Hollyhill by mid-2025.
DBFL said there was a longer-term projection “of 6,000 employees by 2030 subject to market conditions”.
The grant of permission for the 285 parking spaces is in addition to the 2,572 parking spaces either on-site or under construction at the Hollyhill Campus.
In a planning report lodged with the application, consultants HW Planning said the proposal was appropriate to facilitate the continued successful operation of Apple Operations in Cork and to meet the growing needs of their operations across Ireland and Europe "in the absence of frequent public transport provision".
They said the additional car spaces were required despite initiatives being implemented on campus to promote sustainable travel options.
Outlining the background to the application in a Parking Justification Report, DBFL said “the additional spaces are requested to provide short-medium term resilience and mitigate anticipated delays to the planned public transport and road network improvements ahead of the opening of the Hollyhill 5 building in mid-2025”.
The report said that "in the longer term, there may be scope to repurpose these spaces to higher-value uses that the expansion of the Apple Campus – once the planned key upgrades to Cork’s transport network are delivered”.
Outlining the need for the additional car spaces, the report cites delays in various public transport initiatives.
The report said that initially the Cork Metropolitan Area Transport Strategy (CMATS) 2040 envisaged the construction of the Cork Northern Distributor Multi Modal Road (CNDR) by 2027 which would provide orbital active travel and public transport connectivity to the campus.
"However, the likelihood is that the delays to the roll-out of the CNDR in particular, will necessitate short-medium term requirement of the proposed car-parking."
On planned BusConnects, the report said that while the original BusConnects timeline envisaged roll-out of infrastructure and services beginning in 2024, roll-out is now scheduled to commence in 2025/2026.
"The delays in the rollout of BusConnects has resulted in additional Apple Shuttle services being required to address ongoing issues in journey time reliability."
It said park and ride facilities at Dunkettle and Blarney/Stoneview have yet to be delivered "despite the establishment of a dedicated Park and Ride office in the National Transport Authority".
The report said that in line with Apple’s wider commitments to climate action and sustainability objectives, it would seek to reduce the number of employees commuting to the Hollyhill Campus by car in the long-term, by reducing the number of spaces per employee over time.
