‘Hundreds of children will pay the price with no green space’

RESIDENTS in a Rathfarnham estate are opposing plans for a residential development to be built on a green space, stating that if it is built on it will be “lost forever”.

Residents of Pearse Brothers Park in Ballyboden, Rathfarnham had organised a fundraising bingo event to raise money to pay legal and planning fees to fight South Dublin County Council’s management’s decision to “bypass local councillors and the Part 8 public consultation process” for the development.

The event was due to take place on Sunday, July 10, but has been postponed due to unforeseen reasons.

The plans for the residential development are for a 10-unit social housing project for independent living for older persons which includes the construction of six one-bedroom one-storey houses, two two-bedroom ground floor apartments and two two-bedroom first floor apartments.

An artist impression of the plans

The public consultation phase for the proposed development closed on Friday, July 9, and received 20 public submissions raising observations relating to the consultation.

Chairperson of Ballyboden Tidy Towns, Angela O’Donoghue, says that the plans for the residential development will “go against the council’s own plan”.

“They cannot vote in favour of something that clearly contravenes their own plans. In normal planning applications, a development should have 15% of open space, that is the standard. At the moment, Pearse Brothers Park has half of that.

“It is not the first time they have come to Palmer Park and Pearse Park in Ballyboden, but this time instead of having 15%, which currently they are at half of that, as a result of this development they should only have 4.1%, which is quite nasty,” says Angela.

On the GoFundMe page, the residents outlined the reasons why they believe that the development should not go ahead, including that the green space provides a “safe place for children to play, hosting regular local community events and is home to many bats, foxes and wildflowers”.

The GoFundMe page reads: “If it is built on it is lost forever for future and for current residents. Hundreds of children will pay the price with no green space to play on, as time and time again SDCC has targeted every green space in our area to the point that we now have 4.1 % compared to 15% elsewhere.”

Angela went on to say: “It can’t just go ahead, the way they worded it in the development plan they can’t just automatically assume they can build on it. There are built in criteria to protect the existing residents and they are breaching all of those.

“There are some amazing planners and some amazing people that work in the council and I would be very quick to praise those individuals but there is no way that this housing development would pass the standard of the planning department, because the planners in the planning department are great and if they were to look at this they would just refuse it,” says Angela.

The residents say that they are in the process of organising a new fundraising event and hope it will take place in the coming weeks.