Despite all of their Councillors on the neighbouring Fingal County Council having voted to approve the plan for a vast ‘Dunsink City Quarter,’ the Sinn Féin, Social Democrat, Fianna Fáil and People Before Profit Councillors for the Finglas ward on Dublin City Council have called for an extension to the public consultation on the proposal to the end of September.
The consultation which is due to end on Friday, July 31, is in any event little more than a public relations exercise as once the plan was approved by the Fingal County Council executive with the backing of the overwhelming majority of the Councillors, it was a done deal.
The only Fingal Councillor to consistently oppose the plan for the 18,500 unit plan which will house 45,000 people when completed was Patrick Quinlan of the National Party. He spoke at a meeting in Valley Park yesterday evening following a march of several hundred people who are opposed to the building of multi storey apartment blocks directly behind their own homes.
Community activist Stephen Redmond also spoke, as did several local people including Seán who has been living in Valley Park for decades and who raised his family there. Redmond and others in the estates immediately impacted were the first to make people in Finglas aware of the plan.
Despite the lack of notification, the spontaneous community response and awareness campaign has already led to more than 150 submissions with that number certain to increase over the next week as activists organise their own public event to assist people in making online submissions and to help navigate the Finglas planning documents and portal.
The reaction of the south and west Finglas community was most likely unexpected given the late objections of the five Councillors whose parties not only voted for the new ‘city’ but who had also backed the Dublin City Council’s own multiple approvals of high rise apartment blocks which are coming to dominate and overwhelm much of what was Finglas.
It is also apparent that the State and the local authorities can no longer rely on the “we need housing” mantra when increasing numbers of the ‘We’ are coming to realise that most of the new housing is, and will increasingly be, occupied by persons coming to Ireland from overseas.
The demographic projections of the State make that abundantly clear. You require no more than basic maths to understand that if 90% of current and foreseeable population growth is made up of immigrants that the vast bulk of housing demand – along with the demand on every other provision and service – will be driven by that demographic imperative.
People – including people who I have spoken to about the plan to build what would currently be the sixth or seventh largest urban centre in the state at the end of their back garden – can also see the glaring dichotomy at the heart of the “we” need this.
The most obvious one being that many of their own sons and daughters and grandchildren are away in Australia and elsewhere. Forced in many instances to move primarily by the difficulties in securing homes especially if they intend to have children. Which many do when they are away.
And you know what, perhaps wanting to keep the fields for horses and dogs and foxes and all manner of birds is NIMBYISM. Protecting and conserving your own place. No reason why working class Dubs living on the edge of one of the surviving rural parts of our county are any less entitled to say No as those in higher social echelons.
Including those in other parts of Dublin who have – so far – ensured that none of the joys of diversity like IPAS centres and social and approved housings being allocated to people from IPAS accommodation and estates being almost entirely taken by people on work permits are landed on top of them.
Save the young fella’s horse.
