Council drops Pearse Park rezoning
Childcare facility to go ahead
It gives me great pleasure to inform people in Crumlin that Dublin City Council has dropped the rezoning of 10 per cent of Pearse Park from recreational space to residential.
Also after a year of campaigning by the Dublin 12 Development Action Group (DAG) and myself, the council has also agreed to offer the old caretaker and depot site to build the €1.4 million affordable childcare facility.
Congratulations to the community, Crumlin FC and the boxing clubs, DAG and the local residents’ associations who by working together pushed this off the agenda. Remember, in June last year when the rezoning was first placed on the agenda, I was the only counsellor who opposed it.
Thanks to everyone who got involved in the “Our Park is not for Sale” campaign, helped distribute and sign the petition, who lobbied counsellors, distributed leaflets, attended meetings, expressed their views at the consultation process where 90 per cent said we wanted our facilities but DID NOT WANT rezoning of our park. Thanks to all those who handed out the stickers and wore them at this year’s May Day anti-racism football tournament.
This is what democracy looks like.
Let’s hope that it has not been left too late to draw down the grant for the childcare facility. This should have been started a year ago and not linked into the general upgrading of the park (it was the only facility that had hard cash allocated to it). I wish the Dublin 12 childcare consortium well for the future.
We now have to ensure that Crumlin gets a new swimming pool and that the football, boxing, GAA and bowling clubs are facilitated to upgrade their facilities. The council intimated vaguely that we could lose our swimming pool because of cutbacks.
I will be at the heart of working and organising with the community to ensure this does not happen. Meetings will be organised for the community to have an input into the upgrading of the park for the people A victory won. The battle goes on.
Drimnagh Action Group
The planning applications by Superquinn at the Halfway and by the Christian Brothers at Drimnagh Castle have been withdrawn. Also, despite winning planning permission for the Keeper Road site, the developer there, Dalton has decided to sell on, but at a later date when he hopes the price will be better.
It seems that the downturn in the property market, with thousands of apartments, office and retail spaces unsold or unlet, is making itself felt. But the opposition of local communities to many of these developments is also a key factor. DAG has played a key role in Dublin 12 in raising community awareness and in fighting for a community voice in the redevelopment of our areas and we will continue to do so.
Meanwhile, thanks to residents in Dowland, Lisle, Moeran, Balfe Road East area who donated Û1,500 in door to door collections to help pay our legal fees on the issue of the development at the rear of St Agnes Church.
Planning permission has been sought for apartments in a five story development on the Eason site at Brickfield Drive. The Keeper Road/Brickfield Residents have lodged objections to restrict the height.
Dublin City Council will be organising consultation with community groups on the Royal Liver/ Mercedes and Nissan sites on the Long Mile Road. These will be major developmets with a big impact on all the surrounding areas. The council is asking the three developers involved to work with a council appointed consultant to integrate the developments. Contact DAG at Pat @ 087 7764422 or Sean @ 087 6369636
DUBLIN 12 DEVELOPMENT ACTION GROUP CALLS AGM
Dublin 12 is being saturated with planning applications. The Dublin 12 Development Action Group (DAG), supported by Cllr Joan Collins, has played an important role in organising local residents and communities to challenge many plans for these high-rise buildings. Examples include proposals for six- to seven-storey buildings in Crumlin Village, a nine-storey development at the Bank of Ireland on the Long Mile Road – the list goes on.
Joan Collins says: “We do not oppose development. What we oppose is excessive height in a mainly two-storey pitched-roof community. And we object to the silence around the provision of the extra services that are vital in a more highly populated area.
“Who will benefit most if these plans for high-rise buildings go ahead in their present form? We know it won’t be us, the people who live, work and rear our families in this area.”
The DAG is also actively campaigning to prevent the city council from selling 10 per cent of Crumlin’s Pearse Park to a developer as part of a public/private venture. This venture would provide up to €6 million or more to pay for the park’s redevelopment along with new community facilities.
Joan Collins says: “It’s outrageous that in a community with little or no green park space we are being forced to sell off part of a park – a much used and much needed facility – in order to fund other amenities and services needed in the area! We know over 40 sites are earmarked for the building of high-rise flats.
“We have also found out that funding is being withdrawn from the Citizens’ Advice Centre on Sundrive Road because the powers-that-be claim Crumlin doesn’t need these services. Why? Because, they say, we are too affluent.”
The Dublin 12 DAG is having its annual general meeting this Saturday, November 17th in Moeran Hall, Walkinstown, Dublin 12, from 1pm-3pm. The AGM has invited community speakers from the Fatima regeneration project.
The DAG meeting will call for:
• A Dublin 12 statutory integrated plan,
• A moratorium on large-scale planning applications while the plan is being put in place,
• For Dublin City Council to provide funding to the community for planners.
FRIENDS OF LANSDOWNE VALLEY PARK
Lansdowne Valley Park has been the focus of a lot of attention recently. A year ago, Dublin City Council included it in the Bluebell Integrated Plan which proposed building houses on the site as part of a public private partnership. The funds from these were supposed to go towards paying for services in Bluebell.
After considerable objections by local people, with the support of Cllr Joan Collins, the plan was dropped but the park is not safe from development and developers.
The Dublin 12 Development Action Group, along with several resident associations in the area, is now campaigning to draw up an integrated plan for Drimnagh, which would include Lansdowne Valley Park. The group has also commissioned an ecologist to draw up a report on what has become a wildlife sanctuary.
It is hoped that a new dedicated campaign group, Friends of Lansdowne Valley Park, will be set up soon to devote its energy to preserving this site.
The community is determined that this the site will remain a park and that public private ventures are not welcome here.
Development Action Group (DAG)
Needs of community before developers’ profits
The Dublin 12 Development Action Group (DAG) was established in 2005. Its aim is to help people to get organised in Crumlin, Drimnagh and Walkinstown, to ensure community facilities and affordable homes for people from Dublin 12 are top of the agenda in the area’s redevelopment.
DAG was established with the participation of a wide number of community organisations and residents associations in the Dublin 12 area, as a response to the fact that developers see the area, with its proximity to the Luas, as a prime target. There is a real danger that Dublin 12 will be swamped with high rise, high density apartment buildings.
That would mean huge profits for speculators, at the expense of an area already lacking in green space, community facilities, and affordable and social housing for the 1,800 people on the Dublin 12 housing waiting list. The community must fight for its right to have a say in how Drimnagh is developed.
The Drimnagh branch of DAG meets fortnightly in the St John Bosco Youth Centre. To get involved or find out more, contact DAG through Dermot on 087 767 5691.
No major development until there is
community consultation and agreement
Independent Councillor Joan Collins, who helped set up DAG, has demanded that there should be a hold on all major planning applications until there has been a full consultation with the local community and agreement on an integrated plan for Dublin 12.
DAG supports this approach and calls on other Councillors in Dublin 12 to do likewise. Council management have said that it would be illegal to put a blanket ban on planning applications. This is an excuse. We are not talking about all planning applications, but quite specifically certain sites. A new motion to this effect will be put down by Joan Collins.
Major developments in Drimnagh, or which the community has a key interest, are the former convent on Knocknarea Road, the Moume Road Hall, The Lar Redmond Centre on Keeper Road, the Crumlin Shopping Centre, and the area along the canal from Suir bridge to Kilworth Road.
We are not opposed to development. In fact, the present situation is an opportunity to meet some of the basic needs of our community, including affordable housing. We are not opposed to apartments in themselves.
The question is where, on what scale, at what height, and what impact will they have on nearby residents, traffic and so on? Already the Luas is overcrowded at peak times. What will be the effect if huge apartment blocks are built all along the canal?
We are in favour of a mix of housing, duplexes and apartments, affordable to people from Drimnagh, alongside community facilities. We also believe priority should be given to those on the Dublin 12 housing list.
The St John Bosco centre is right in the middle of the area coming up for redevelopment on the canal. It could be given the space and funding to expand it could be at the centre of an integrated set of facilities. A new shopping centre could also be part of this site, along with suitable housing. Is there the basis for developing the convent, the Curlew Road Clinic and the Mourne Road Hall into an integrated set of facilities?
These are issues on which the local community should be able to look at various options and have their say. We need better facilities for our young and elderly people. We need a well equipped and well serviced health centre, not the run down clinic that’s there now. We need a library, we need a swimming pool, or a least a guarantee that the proposed new pool in Pearse Park will be able to serve the needs of all in Dublin 12.
What we don’t need is a hot-potch of high rise, high density apartment blocks, allowing speculators make huge profits out of the LUAS line. That is what we will get, unless we get organised now, and demand our say, in how our area is developed.
Lar Redmond Centre
The Council is proposing to sell the Lar Redmond Centre on Keeper Road to a developer, on a promise, nothing more, that the money raised will be used for a community centre in Brickfield Park.
Even if this happens, is this the best place to put a community centre for Drimnagh?
Would it not make more sense to expand and develop the Bosco, with its more central location, and link this to provision of other much needed community facilities in a redevelopment of the lands along the canal?
Will the development of a centre in Brickfield mean the loss of football pitches? These are issues which people in Drimnagh need to be consulted about. There should be no deals with developers behind our backs.
Texaco site at Halfway
A notice to seek planning permission for apartments has been put up on the former garage site at the Halfway House, opposite the apartments on Slieve Bloom. If you are concerned about this proposed development, contact DAG.
We are asking people to watch out for these notices on sites, they are never very prominent. Please inform DAG of any proposed developments.
