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Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council has granted planning permission for more than 1,500 houses to be built on Dun Laoghaire Golf Club following a marathon meeting of the council overnight.
Lots of people complaining about loss of green lung. But it was private space not much use to any non golfers. People obviously worried about congestion but at least its near dart and bus routes and Dun Laoghaire itself with all its amenities. That can’t be said for the the land between Glennamuck and kilteirnan which has also been rezoned. This is going to be a big issue in the local elections………..
ever notice every second thing in the IFSC is called custom house something or other, square, quay etc.
they really need to remove the trees obscuring the view of Trinity looking down Dame Street. Can Just see the Green Party chaining themselves to the trees!!
Originally posted by alan d
Anto, it’s a mistake I think to suggest that because people in the country don’t take the Times they are disinterested or insensitive…..that has not been my experience but rather it a a paternalistic or condescending attitude that grinds.
It’s discussion, debate and education not legislation that’s the key, to this…… which can only change attitude over time
Yeah true enough, that’s why an Tasice’s campaign has backfired so spectacularly.
Good article from
http://www.unison.ie/search/frame_search.php3?span=web&words=one%20off%20housing
One-off Housing Killed My Cat
By Mark Waters
Sep 18, 2003, 18:04:00Email this article
Printer friendly pageOK, this one’s personal. One-off housing killed my cat.
For much of my youth I lived in so-called ribbon development housing on the outskirts of Castlebar. The ‘development’ consisted of a number of one-off houses clinging to the sides of the busy main road. Each house was individually serviced with its own water supply, electricity supply and telephone line and septic tank. Each had its own access to the main road. Each had its own means of handling refuse disposal. In short, each dwelling was a castle, self-sufficient and living in splendid isolation from its neighbours.
My cat was a beauty; her fur was a kaleidoscope of black, white and gold. We had rescued her from certain death after her mother – a stray- gave birth to a litter in a coal bag outside our house. She grew strong and healthy and one day produced a litter of her own. A few days after, following an unfortunate altercation with a neighbour’s dog she decided it would be wise to take her five babies to a safer place. That place was in another neighbour’s yard – on the other side of the busy main road.
The arrangement worked well for a few days. The kittens were safe and their mother would cross the road a few times a day to be fed at our house. Then one day the inevitable happened. The cat was killed crossing the road by a motorist who was driving so fast that he probably didn’t even notice. We did our best to nurse the motherless kittens but without their mother it was hopeless and one by one they faded away and died.
Our cats paid the ultimate price but we ourselves suffered in little ways every day as a consequence of living in a one-off house. Services were inferior. Our electricity gave out a light that was a pale imitation of that of our friends in town. Our water supply had weak pressure. Our septic tank left our back garden looking like a marsh. Later when the internet arrived it came at a crawl. Our telephone line was so far from the telephone exchange that we would have been quicker driving two miles to the nearest shop and buying the newspaper rather than wait for it to download.
And everything was so far away. Hours of our life were squandered travelling to and from school, to the sports clubs, swimming pool, and the houses of friends and, later on, to and from discos and pubs. Like most of our neighbours we were a single car household and huge demands were placed on the car. Cycling was an option only if you were willing to take your chances on the Russian roulette of the road.
And the road itself was like a knife cutting through the heart of the community. It was so dangerous that you were taking your life into your own hands if you dared to visit your neighbour. So we didn’t. We retreated into our castles, and to our televisions, barely connected to the world by our cars – the very things that were imprisoning us in our homes.
This is the legacy of one-off housing and this is the reality of Bertie Ahern’s notion of supporting one-off housing as a means of creating viable communities in the west.
One-off housing developments may save the politicians at the next election and they may save the farmers by putting a few euro in their pockets to delay the inevitable day of reckoning before they finally accept that their lifestyle is unviable and unsustainable. But they will not save the farmers’ sons and daughters. The farmers cry that their children cannot build on their land and are forced to leave. But it is not the lack of one-off housing that causes the sons and daughters to jump ship; it is the cost of living and the quality of life that the consequences of one-off developments force on them. They leave because to stay means to pay more for poorer services and to suffer boredom, loneliness and a denial of their potential to contribute to and enjoy a fully functioning community.
A community of one-off houses has a serious disadvantage before it even starts out on the road to viability, sustainability and growth. Services cost more money and offer a poorer quality than they do in co-ordinated developments. Scarce resources are spread ever thinner across the landscape. The potential for economic development is limited. Everyone is pulling against everyone else instead of in the same direction.
Co-ordinated development does not provide the solution to all our problems but it provides a more solid foundation from which to tackle them. It gives us the breathing space to fulfil the potential that is often frustrated by a lack of common purpose. The loneliness and isolation of the elderly and housebound, the struggle of the GAA clubs to make the numbers for teams, the difficulty teenagers face trying to get to the disco because it’s twenty miles away, the drink-driving roller coaster home after a night at a pub because of the lack of taxis, the difficulty of organising a community festival; these are just a few of the things made more difficult to deal with when we have to first surmount the obstacle of a dysfunctional and disconnected community.
We delude ourselves into thinking that one-off housing is about freedom and the rights of the individual. But if everyone is given complete freedom and the right to build where they like then no one is free. Everyone is compromised by everyone else. Without co-ordination the friction between individuals becomes so great that we all grind to a halt. With rights comes responsibilities. In the case of property rights these responsibilities are crucial. How landowners use their land has a huge impact on the broader society. It could be argued that many landowners are being so irresponsible in their attitude to the land that its potential for future generations has been irrecoverably damaged.
We delude ourselves into thinking that this is Ireland and that we are different. Dr. Seamus Caulfield, well known for his work with the Ceide Fields, has suggested that the definition of an Irish village is different to that of its British or European counterpart. He says that housing of the one-off type, where dwellings could be up to two miles apart and still be considered part of the village, were commonplace in the west of Ireland for much of our recent history and that planning strategy should take this into account.
But if we accept this argument then we must also acknowledge that many of these uniquely Irish villages were unviable and have all but disappeared and all those that do survive rely on the dubious foundations of farm subsidies and the release-valve of emigration to sustain them. To accept a one-off housing policy and to encourage development along the lines of the allegedly uniquely Irish village is to condemn us to repeat the mistakes of a past which few of us would wish to return to.
We delude ourselves into thinking that our leaders don’t have the vision and ability to solve the problem. But we have county development plans and national strategies – developed with strong input from politicians – which are often models of vision, reason and common-sense but which are then totally compromised by the short-term interests of the self-same politicians.
The conflict between the short-term interests of politicians – always with an eye on the next election – and the long-term view of the planners has led to a paralysis that has damaged the integrity of the planning process. Furthermore, when politicians have the power to influence or reverse individual planning decisions it undermines confidence and defeats the whole point of the process. The politicians should only have the power to frame policy. Then they should let the planners get on with the job of implementing that policy.
Support for a one-off housing policy is tantamount to support for no housing policy at all. It shows a lack of any vision or hope for the viability and sustainability of communities in the west of Ireland. The long-term benefit is sacrificed on the altar of blind short-term individualist thinking, a way of thinking that has stifled our potential so often in the past. The archaeologists at the Ceide Fields with justifiable pride state that their discovery proves that there were human settlements in Mayo 5000 years ago. Looking at the settlements around me today it is hard to see that we have made much progress since.
© Copyright 2004 by the author(s)/photographer(s) and http://www.castlebar.ie
Interesting thing about Frank McDonald and the letters to times etc. is that most rural folk never see this. Not many rural folk “take” the times. I mean they’re only preaching to the already converted mainly urban sophisticates. Then again most of the Times readership lives in car dependant suburbs. I mean if you read the provincial press you never see this type of critisism, far more likely to read the farmer can’t get permission on his own land type of article. Why does the issue seem to be more of an issue on the western seabord? Is the tradition there to live in a more dispersed fashion with the east coast rural folk more “villagised” or is it that small farmers in the “wesht” see sites as their only crop that’ll make them any money
I see That Frank McDonald is continuing his crusade against one off houses on Page 2 of the times today. Interesting article about Killarney where one off suburban estates are springing up about 10 miles from killarney. Another guy talking about Kenmare (one of Ireland’s more attrative towns) says only 7 families of school going age live in the town, everybody else wants to live “out the country”. Wonder if cost is a factor in all this as well as people’s desire to live away from everybody else. Still if people think a place like Kenmare is too Urban for them, there’s no hope.
The idea of compulsory purchase of land makes emminent sense but a lot of the motivation behind one off housing is the selling of sites by farmers, it’s a small industry now. Where people live in rural Ireland is goverend by which farmer sells the most sites. Don’t think farmers & country people in really appreciate being told to cluster. There has to be more emphasis on design, even if native hedgerows and hardwood trees were planted, the houses would blend into countyrside a bit better.
Can’t help thinking that an Taisce’s preachiness has alienated people. They haven’t really outlined how they see villages developing. Same opinion in Sunday Time’s article below…..
Comment: Liam Fay: Planning snobs are strangling rural life
You can buy almost anything on a Dublin building site. Drugs, booze, sex toys, jewellery, you name it — all you have to do is find the right guy and place your order. Over the years, the capital’s larger construction sites have grown into sophisticated, self-contained civilisations, complete with their own laws, customs and internal black markets.
There’s a site on the southside where the on-campus merchants are so efficient that they’ve printed up catalogues from which their customers can reserve merchandise for delivery. Right now, the biggest seller among its workers is Viagra, the male impotency pill, which is being dispensed with reckless abandon.Naturally, this is a facet of the building industry one never hears about, from either employers’ representative bodies or building worker unions. But then, a great deal of what is said publicly about the construction game bears little resemblance to reality as experienced by those who ply their trades in hard hats.
A similar air of unreality surrounds the public representation of the rural planning process, a system which has also evolved a complex, sovereign culture of its own. It’s a world whose logic appears to make perfect sense to insiders but is impenetrable to everybody else.
Though charged with implementing uniform government policy, local authority planners are frequently laws unto themselves. The decisions they take often display little evident consistency or discernible rationale.
Attempting to decode the thinking of council planners is one of rural Ireland’s few thriving industries. This impossible task isn’t made any easier by the imperious and secretive attitudes of many planning officials. Or the fact that most county development plans are harder to read than Finnegan’s Wake.
However, the most controversial feature of the rural planning process is the role played by environmental and conservation agencies, most notably An Taisce — the National Trust for Ireland.
Under the planning acts, local authorities are obliged to consult An Taisce on sensitive development proposals. The organisation has a statutory right to appeal the granting of individual planning permissions which are then adjudicated upon by An Bord Pleanala. It’s a right which most country-dwellers believe is being exercised with undue vigour — not least because the planning board upholds the overwhelming majority of such appeals.
While An Taisce’s objections to rural developments appear to be the product of high-minded environmental concerns — about ground-water contamination, say, or the protection of heritage sites — there is a clear cultural component to their interventions which is never acknowledged, namely an absurdly romanticised view of the countryside as a pastoral idyll in which human intrusion must be kept to an absolute minimum.
Many of these environmentalists are driven by a supercilious and often ideological distaste for what they regard as the crude tastes and tacky aspirations of unsophisticated rural folk. The countryside, they seem to believe, is wasted on the countrified.
Congenitally thick though we are said to be, most rural people understand full well that there is all sorts of extraneous stuff (social envy, snobbery, even class war) mixed in with the ecological arguments propounded by An Taisce and their ilk.
Witness the snooty disdain evidenced by many environmentalists for what are sourly described as the “ostentatious mansions†and “Southfork villas†which supposedly litter the rural skyline, or the condescension with which more modest country homes are dismissed as part of a “bungalow blitz†-— as though the very term “bungalow†were an insult.
Farmers and other rural residents deeply resent the implication that they are unfit to act as custodians of the land on which they live. They become apoplectic when they learn that plans by their son or daughter to build a house on family property have been thwarted, essentially on the say-so of a blow-in or day-tripper.
Hence, the steaming cauldron of resentment and frustration which has been fermenting in rural areas for a decade has spilled over into every aspect of what has become a poisonously divisive debate.
This is why the draft guidelines on “Sustainable Rural Housing†outlined this week by Martin Cullen, the environment minister, are to be welcomed, if only because they bring a degree of clarity and consistency to an arena that’s been blighted by confusion and caprice.
The supporting walls of the guidelines are proposals which, it is claimed, will make it easier for people with rural connections, either by birth or through work, to build one-off houses in the countryside.
The timing of the publication of Cullen’s draft policy — days before the Fianna Fail ard fheis and weeks before the local elections — was obviously politically motivated. In truth, however, the government had little option but to take action in favour of those who wish to build homes in the country, such is the intensity of feeling about this issue throughout the provinces.
If the proposed loosening of planning restrictions results in the construction of more ill-considered ribbon developments and a rash of unsustainable one-off housing in some rural areas, the environmental lobby in general and An Taisce in particular will have nobody to blame but themselves.
The organisation adopted such a relentlessly haughty and antagonistic approach in its guise as planning watchdog that it effectively guaranteed a civic and governmental backlash, in which the baby could well be thrown out with the bathwater.
Thrilled giddy by its perception of itself as the sole protector of the Irish natural world, An Taisce has on occasions acted without evident consideration for the lives of people who reside in the country. While there are fanatics on both sides of this debate, there is nothing to equal the preening arrogance of sanctimonious conservationists.
It’s an arrogance neatly exemplified on radio last week by Ciaran Cuffe, the Green party’s planning spokesman and An Taisce member. “We’ve got to look very carefully at who should be living in the countryside,†declared Cuffe.
Who is this “we†of whom he speaks? And when were they divinely endowed with the power to decide where people should be permitted to live? Groups such as An Taisce, and their fellow rainbow warriors, must eventually realise that they are part of Irish society, not its guardians or overlords. Until they do, their self-appointed crusades are doomed to end in humiliating defeat.
Like Dublin building sites and the rural planning process, the countryside is a highly evolved social order with its own rules, traditions and defence mechanisms. The big difference is that this is a civilisation which has survived for thousands of years. Outsiders who would try to dictate to its inhabitants do so at their peril.
To reverse these errors is simple; all it requires is the vision and political will. Architects should come out in favour of a car free Dublin Centre. Where there are existing bus lanes, these should be kerbed off, trees planted, cycle space painted red and turned into two- way cycle lanes.
Every single city centre street should have this basic provision for cyclists. In cases where streets are too narrow to cater for cyclists and cars, the cars should be banned. The only exception would be deliveries: these could only take place during 4am-6am.
Where there is conflict between car and bike, bike must win out. For the bike does not harm the environment; it is good for people, for the quality of life of the city, for a smog-free environment. If the government is serious about a ‘smoke-free’ environment the first thing to do is elimate the choking fumes of the cars that are turning our city into a smouldering traffic cesspit.
Another point: Outside beautiful buildings like the Leinster House Lawn and the Rotunda, sit these giant car parks. With this attitude, I won’t be holding my breath for a clean, car-less Dublin. [/B][/QUOTE]
Dream on! I’d like to see the traders agreeing to that. For God’s sake the will to get the luas thro’ the centre of town wasn’t there. An underground option to link the two lines sometime off in the future was chosen instead.
Its not the architects job to make the development plans or roads.
But the architects could still have designed pedestrian access to Central Park to accomadate Luas users.
As for the Explosion of Office Space in Leapardtown/Sandyford, Dun Laohaire/RD Coco wanted to expand their rates base and are basically competing with Fingal, Dublin South and the City Centre for this. The splitting up of Dublin then hardly facilitates stategic planning from this point of view.
Where would you have Dun Laoghire CoCo put this type of development, I imagine where people live facilitating walking/cycling Dart use etc. but getting planning for large office development in these places can be problematic as residents (esp. in Leafy DL) can be vocal in their opposition to what they see as traffic generating offices.
Are new offices compelled to provide showers? If not they should be. A lot of people might cycle if they could shower at the other end. I’m working in Central Park, Leapordstown and whatever else about the development at least there are showers I can use after my 5 mile uphill cycle.
My brother in Galway works for a multinational which I’m sure has a few hundred parking spaces but no showers and it’s a new building too, surely the planners can force them to provide a few showers.
As for Central Park, it ludicrously turns its back to where pedestrians will enter after getting off the Luas in Sandyford compelling them to walk for another 10 mins, totally designed for cars and basement parking etc. Who do you blame, crappy architects or the planners who should be facilitaing pedistrians/public transport users. I won’t start on the cycle lane going up the leapordtown road like a roller coaster ride. Better than nothing I suppose!
Does anybody have any news on how this is progressing? Any pictures maybe. Must be more advanced than Dublin’s Main Street.
Wait ’til all those civil cervants want to build their bungalows on the outskirts of these towns, Bungalow blight! ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
FF were never really committed to the Spatial Strategy plan, they are a clientilist, populist party and they’re going to love this in the FF heartlands. Brilliant stroke with the upcoming local elections!
Maybe all this vacant office space will encourage conversion to apartments which I’m sure everybody agrees here will be a good thing.
Clare county council has a document about appropriat building in the countryside
http://www.clare.ie/filerepository/382291.pdf
Wonder why they don’t enforce it!
woops sorry ’bout that last post. What I meant to ask was how does Patrick Street look now? Is it a success? or too early to tell.
As for the chewing gum, that was inevitable. We need to do a Singapore on that one I think and ban it.
Originally posted by d_d_dallas
This country is reaching crisis point in it’s waste managment strategy (or lack of) – the concept of “polluter pays” is going to be more and more relevant. Example: tax on chewing gum. I fully support this – after seeing the destruction of the rejuevenated parts of Patrick’s St in Cork after only ONE WEEK – so long as this tax goes totally towards the removal of chewing gum from the pavements of our city centres.
Staying in Cork: there’s a pilot scheme that is set to be fully rolled out across the entire county. The County Council will install chips into the wheely bins – you pay a flat rate, plus a charge per kg waste therefter (the chip measures how heavy your waste is and is read by a scanner by the bin men). It was run in smaller towns in the west of the county and is very much a reality.Alternatively we could all pay 65% income tax and zero VAT, VRT, DIRT etc etc etc…
Just heard that aer lingus are cancelling their daily flights between dublin & cork, another blow to the real capital. Maybe some other airline will take up the slack
one thing Cork definitely has over Dublin, i.e the English Market. Super place and has the best fish in the country
