A PLAN to locate a £28 million technology park on a former gasworks on Belfast's Ormeau Road appears to have fallen through. At a meeting between officers of Queen's University and Belfast City Council, the university announced that at five acres, the site was too small and "insufficiently integrated" to support the kind of development which it proposed.

University provost Prof Sean Fulton said other sites would be considered, although none had been identified as yet. But he said that the university remained totally committed to the idea of a technology park in the Belfast area.

But the chairman of Belfast City Council's economic development committee, Mr Reg Empey, accused the university of wanting the site for nothing.

"We are impressed by the plan," he said, "and offered a deal which was, frankly, less than we could have made commercially. But the financial offer from Queen's was completely unrealistic."