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A candidate for the Dundrum LEA elections on Friday has said that the issue of restricted access to the village under a plan to create a 10-min town is of “enormous concern” for locals, and has vowed to insist on a “better plan for Dundrum” if elected.
Liam Coughlan of Aontú, who is an engineer and who has been involved with a campaign opposing the proposal, said that the plan was not “people-orientated”, and had been opposed by “a very large majority” of the hundreds of locals “who had gone to the effort of making a public submission only to be ignored”.
He said that he had gone through every submission made by the public to the consultation and calculated that more than 70% of people were opposed to the plan which he said would “make it very, very difficult to get in and out of Dundrum”.
He described the proposed changes as “ridiculous” and told Gript that “people and small businesses did not seem to count at all” when it came to the plans to restrict access to the village. “What about people with mobility issues, or deliveries, or families with young children?” he asked. “The plans only seem to imagine that everyone is a fit cyclist aged between 20 and 40 with an aversion to cars or who wants to only shop online.”
He said that it would be his first priority if elected to seek to have the plan “dramatically amended” in order to have the views of the majority of people living in Dundrum reflected.
The drafters of the Local Area Plan for Dundrum have been upfront about what it is trying to achieve – essentially introducing restrictions to “encourage” people not to use cars for their trips where possible.
The Dundrum local area plan was voted on by elected council members at a special council meeting last October, and came into effect on November 21. Mr Coughlan told Gript that it was “outrageous” that 6 out of 7 of the current Councillors had voted for the plan, thereby, he said, disregarding local concerns. “Why were 70% of the submissions ignored?” he asked.
Hundreds of people marched through the village in south Dublin in September to protest the plans, with local GP Ciarán Bent telling the Irish Times that many locals “will not be able to enter the village”. He said restrictions and one way systems already introduced affected five roads and 10 lanes of traffic.
Mr Coughlan said that he spent over 25 years working in a senior capacity as an engineer for the four Dublin Local Authorities, including Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council. “The needs of local people must always come first,” he said, “that’s not currently happening and that needs to change”.
In a statement, the council said it was “not realistic” to pursue “business as usual” approach to managing traffic in Dundrum and that the “existing road network is heavily focused on the private car”.
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