Yesterday’s meeting of Fingal County Council on the Dunsink Urban Area Plan had to be moved into a second day as only one quarter of the 240 motions had been discussed and voted upon in the six hours allotted.
To begin proceedings this afternoon, Chief Executive Anne Marie Farrelly reminded the Councillors that while they could pass any motions they wished that they ought to be aware that some of them would have “unintended consequences.”
She specifically warned them that any proposed changes to the proposals on the new LUAS line would dramatically impact on both the construction and the delivery of the housing.
She need not have worried because when the first motion on this came up, in the name of Councillor Patrick Quinlan, he again failed to secure a seconder which meant that his proposal “that Dunsink Lane East, being the section of Dunsink Lane between the M50 motorway and Ratoath Road, is excluded as a light rail corridor and shall not be adopted as an alignment for the future Tyrrelstown Luas route or any other light rail scheme” could not be discussed.
His rationale was that if the lane was to be widened that it would contradict one of the objectives of the draft plan itself (UDF 100) which requires that “ecological connectivity” be retained. That will be impossible if the LUAS line requires widening the road.
Motivated one assumes in large part by political antipathy, the same Councillors who prevented even the hearing of Quinlan’s motion proceeded to propose a series of wishy-washy platitudes about protecting “heritage, landscape and biodiversity corridor, with its existing rural character, mature hedgerows, trees” and so on.
Such motions are utterly meaningless if the construction and its accompanying transportation requirements proceed.
For as local Finglas activist Stephen Redmond pointed out on Facebook, the fact that last night the Council refused to support another Quinlan motion that the LUAS line “shall not be aligned along Scribblestown Lane or along Dunsink Lane East” means that there is nothing to prevent the LUAS being routed along either Scribblestown Lane and Dunsinea Lane, or alternatively Dunsink Lane, should this be determined to be required.
Not one word in any of the wishy-washy Sinn Féin and Aontú motions will prevent this happening. Then again, as we know from the attitude of all the parties over the course of the discussion of this plan not one of them wants anything to interfere with the construction of a ‘new city’ in which they only see votes and another opportunity to big up on diversity.
The antipathy towards Quinlan personally inspired Independent Councillor Jimmy Guerin – whose sole contribution to date had been to complain about how long it was all going on with the air of a man who had better places to be – intervened on another motion from Councillor Quinlan to remark that his concern about badgers contrasted with his views on immigrants. The Agora of Athens it is not.
And so it goes on….
The one positive from Farrelly’s schoolmarmish pep talk was that she did imply that the overall scale of the ‘new city’ will be reduced significantly in size and density.
Today she mentioned a figure between 7,500 and 16,000 units which appears a rather wide margin of error.
This volte face would never have come about had it been left to the vast majority of elected Councillors including those now affecting to be on the side of the communities who objected.
So let us end on a positive note. The opposition, protests and submissions mostly from the Finglas residents of Valley Park and Scribblestown have forced significant concessions on the height and placement of multi-storey apartment blocks.
However, the Valley Park residents’ group, which almost by accident found out about the plan and what it meant after it had already been drafted, have stated that they will continue to oppose the proposed development as it impacts on the Finglas residential housing close to the Dunsink East part of the ‘new city.’
To pass the plan quickly – with the backing of all parties and the majority of Councillors – was clearly the aim of the Council Executive.
However, the singular stance taken by Independent Councillor Patrick Quinlan forced them to revisit this.
It is noticeable that demographics featured in several of the motions in contrast to earlier attempts to disallow and dismiss such questions when they were raised by Councillor Quinlan.
The first motion on Monday, from the Chief Executive Anne Marie Farrelly herself, referred to “demographic information recorded by the Census in 2022 and taking cognisance of the national declining birth rate as per CSO data/projections” in the context of the need to amend the planning of schools.
What she does not note is that while the birth rate of Irish people is declining, the same CSO projections are based on 90% of future population growth being made up of persons born overseas. That is central not only to the plan for Fingal but lies at the heart of all current and future housing demand.
The issue of allocations is directly linked to those projected demographics. We already know, as I reported recently, that more than 40% of housing allocations by Fingal County Council in 2026 have been to households headed by a person born outside the state.
How those allocations are made is therefore important and that was addressed by Quinlan in motion which proposed that “Prior to the advertising for sale or letting of homes within Phase 1, a Dunsink Housing Delivery and Allocation Framework shall be brought before the Area Committee, setting out for each tenure the delivery body, the body responsible for allocation, and the scheme under which allocation will be made.”
I will let you know what happened with that and the final stages of a ‘debate’ that might on a better day serve as a case study of the powerlessness of local government in the Irish state.
Especially when it is mostly made up of nodding dogs who are whipped into line by the governing parties, and others who cannot see the wood for the trees. Nor wish to see them it would seem.