Niamh Lambert sits in her family home on the edge of Fingal County Council’s proposed Dunsink City Quarter.
She is checking social media platforms: “Twelve thousand members on our Facebook page in a few days. More than 350 people on change.org signing a petition since the page was set up last night,” she says. “We had 250 people at a public meeting two weeks ago when we found out what was being planned.”
What is being planned amounts to a new town with up to 18,500 homes on a 435-hectare site inside the M50 between Castleknock, Blanchardstown and Finglas. It is to incorporate a disused Dublin city dump, earmarked for a regional park.
The proposed development could accommodate a population of more than 46,000 people, making it one of the biggest towns in the State, larger than Bray, Dundalk, Swords and Navan.
RM Block
The development is in response to the State’s housing crisis and Fingal has pointed out the land bank is “one of the largest remaining underutilised landbanks within the metropolitan area”.
But Lambert and members of the Dunsink Development Group are passionate in their objections.
“We are not opposing houses and we actually want to have houses. It would be amazing to have housing. We would love to see affordable houses for people around here.
“It would be amazing to have housing for young people in Finglas to be able to afford to live, to be able to have social housing.”
However, locals insist the current proposal is “not a good development”. Lambert cites poor infrastructure, including a paucity of doctors’ practices and schools in the area.
She says Finglas would feel the effects of the proposed scheme, adding “nobody talked to the locals” before the plans were produced.
[ Plan for new town at Dunsink ‘requires €7.3bn water investment’ to proceedOpens in new window ]
A 123-page glossy brochure shows images of a leafy community with schools, plaza-style water features, the Luas and blocks of apartments of about 10 storeys.
Lambert claims this level of infrastructure is “wishful thinking”. “We don’t trust the council after the promises they made and failed to deliver in Charlestown and Meakstown,” she says, referring to previous developments in Finglas that have waited years for infrastructure to catch up with housing.
Lambert laughs in particular at the pictures of the Luas, the planning and cost of which remains undefined and which is not scheduled for delivery until after 2042.
The group also takes issue with the plan for a main access road of four carriageways that would replace the current Scribblestown Lane (also known as Lambert Lane). “They would need to take some land from our biodiversity park, part of the Tolka Valley Park, to achieve this,” says Lambert. She is also concerned for the stables housing the Scribblestown Pony Club, which lie along the lane.
“The council should have asked locals about the illegal dumps that were around the edge of Dunsink for years. Hospital waste and asbestos were dumped but these are not noted in the plans. If there was proper consultation, a sustainable development could be made here,” she says.
“This is not about stopping housing. It is about getting the planning right.”
Sean and Lilly Mooney from Valley Park also expressed their opposition to the development, in a video posted on social media.
“I would just like to express our total opposition to the Fingal County Council proposal to land a city or a town or whatever you want to call it on our doorstep,” said Sean Mooney. “As for the high-rise development proposal – my God, what an absolute joke. Ballymun was knocked down for a good reason.”
Fingal County Council’s planning statement says “engagement was undertaken with relevant stakeholders” before the production of the plan. “The statutory process for preparing an urban area plan includes a period of public consultation during which time submissions can be made by interested parties.”
Public consultation closed last Friday and Fingal county councillors are expected to vote on the plan in coming months.
[ The Irish Times view on developing Dunsink: the challenge of building at scaleOpens in new window ]
