Calls for more services to be put in place for residents
ONE local councillor is calling for more services to be put in place for the residents of Cherry Orchard, stating that they need to come as priority before any further large-scale developments.
At a recent Dublin City Council meeting, Ballyfermot councillor Vincent Jackson forwarded a motion to progress supermarket, retail, cultural and leisure facilities in the Cherry Orchard Area.
As part of the motion, Cllr Jackson said: “I regret that many residents are feeling that all we can offer is housing and more housing. It is essential that we try and frontload essential services to ensure the continued goodwill of the local community.
“The people of Cherry Orchard should have the opportunity to have a coffee shop, local shops, Post Office etc like any other large population centre.”
With a population of around 8,000 and growing, the lack of facilities and services in Cherry Orchard has long been an issue of concern and frustration for residents.
In 2019, Dublin City councillors voted to pass a new local plan for the area, which would see the development of a village centre with amenities and services, however, in March this year the application for the €30m in funding for key objectives within the Park West/Cherry Orchard Local Area Plan (LAP) was rejected by the Department of Housing, after city centre projects were prioritised for regeneration following the impact of Covid-19.
The €30m funding application, if passed, would have been matched by €10.5m from Dublin City Council and would have helped develop new homes, community and recreational space and bring more employment opportunities to the area.
“I think the people of cherry orchard have accepted huge amount of disappointment on the basis that they were promised that there would be a lot of improvements in the area, and I just feel that we seem to be giving them houses all of the time, but we don’t seem to be giving them the necessary resources,” Cllr Jackson told The Echo.
Over the past few years, Cllr Jackson says that the residents have been told that there would be services and facilities built in the area such as a supermarket, but he says that to this day there is still a “deficiency in services”.
“I want to see the supermarket – I don’t want to see other developments coming and in five- or ten-years’ time we go into another recession and all we have is houses and wonder why they didn’t look for the additional resources then.
“I suppose it is a broad cry to management, before you start coming to the elected members for more houses, we want to start seeing more services coming for the people of Cherry Orchard, and I think that is a fair expectation to ask for,” Cllr Jackson concluded.
