Indeeed you can, I did, was a pain in ass. Did/helped my mates with arch liner off, was a lot easier.
I also cut the slots open in the passengers vent open to allow more cold air flow. As for some reason the vents are moulded shut

Not a hard job with a file and some cutters. Plus I got my holes pierced in my arch liner on drivers side which allows the heat to escape from the SMIC (rather than putting a vent in, quite effective as you can feel the heat coming through even when you come to a stop), then that insulation material on the bonnet is also off (so heat escape quicker, in winter the snow just melts when warming up, where before it would take ages to dissappear of the bonnet, which suggests it aids in cooling the bay down). Ontop of all that I heat wrapped the pipe at the back coming out the turbo and up with heat wrap.
Good fun cars these golfs, going to slowly start putting mine stock, as with a child its a tad to rough lowered and contemplating a s3... Also how much these induction kits going second hand as I will be taking mine off in the week to put the airbox back on?