Consultants for Eli Lilly, the maker of blockbuster weight loss drugs, have cited health and safety concerns at the firm’s expanding Kinsale plant for the need for a temporary 360-space car park.Planning documents lodged with Cork County Council state that the Kinsale plant produces five of Eli Lilly’s top eight medicines globally “showing how important the site is to their global operations”. A planning report lodged with the temporary car park application states that over the past five years, Eli Lilly has secured permission for a wide range of developments at Kinsale and these projects reflect a sustained period of expansion and modernisation across the campus.The report states that the Eli Lilly return-to-office policy came into effect in mid 2025 and together with the construction traffic is leading to an increased volume of personnel on site. The report states that “this is leading to cars parking on footpaths and edges of car-park access roads. This presents a health and safety issue to the site”.[ Inside the Irish factory at the centre of the global weight-loss revolutionOpens in new window ]The Arup planning report cautions that “without additional temporary parking, issues such as congestion, parking shortages, and knock on disruption to the surrounding road network and community amenities could occur”. The Eli Lilly Kinsale site “is located in close proximity to Dunderrow village, which would most likely be used as an alternative parking solution without the proposed development”.The current average number of personnel on site per day is put at 1,920 while the current number of car parking spaces is 1,654. The report adds that the number of average cars parked on site currently is 1,690 which results in an average of 36 vehicles being parked uncontrolled on site.Arup states that the this deficit “is already leading to unmanaged overspill parking, giving rise to health and safety concerns and the potential for displacement of parking demand on to the surrounding local road network and nearby settlements”.“The proposed development provides an appropriate and proportionate response to this identified need,” it adds.The “proposed development is temporary, non‑invasive and fully reversible”.Eli Lilly’s Kinsale plant produces Tirzepatide, the active ingredient for its blockbuster GLP-1 drugs Zepbound and Mounjaro. Sales of Mounjaro and Zepbound accounted for (56 per cent) of the company’s annual $65 billion (€56 billion) revenue last year.