Calls have been made for outdoor seating in Rathfarnham village
Outdoor seating area would encourage social gathering
Calls for an outdoor seating area on the Main Street in Rathfarnham have been made to encourage social and community gathering in the village.
Three councillors from the area, Paddy Cosgrave (LAB), David McManus (FG) and Justin Sinnott (SocDem) joined forces to ask SDCC Public Realm to invest in the area by installing a new seating area outside 49-51 Main Street, following proper consultation with local stakeholders.
Their motion was presented at the Rathfarnham / Firhouse area meeting on Tuesday, June 10.
“It’s an opportunity to improve our Public Realm and invest in our main street,” said Cllr McManus.
“To have social and community seating, have a table where people can sit down, have their coffee or read their paper, have a sandwich and enjoy our main street.
“At the moment, there’s only a tiny seating space by the Anne Devlin statue at the end of the village.”
Cllr McManus also referred to Councillor Yvonne Collins’ motion about an excess of commercial bins and litter outside of businesses on the Main Street and said that the proposed seating area could be one way to avoid that.
“Outdoors seating is already very popular in other areas,” he concluded.
While she supported a general improvement of Rathfarnham Main Street, Cllr Collins (FF) said to be cautious of conflicting interests and parking spaces, and encouraged a more consistent use of the existing licence for outdoors seating established during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Councillor Lynn McCrave (FG) said that the local Tidy Towns have been calling for outdoors seating before but that she would also like to see the “heritage style” of Rathfarnham preserved.
Councillor Pamela Kearns (LAB) also invited colleagues to be cautious considering the numerous ongoing plans for Rathfarnham, such as upgrading at the Castle, that need to be completed first.
Restating the benefits outdoors seating would bring into the village, Councillor Paddy Cosgrave (LAB) said, “I’ve been monitoring the situation around the shops, the beauty of it is seeing young teenagers that probably can’t afford going into the restaurants, getting a sandwich and sitting to eat it out there.
“It would bring freshness to have young people into an old area.”
According to SDCC Senior Engineer Gary Walsh, it’s a “challenge” to take into account all the different perspectives within the chamber and the community on the matter.
While he said that the Council are supportive of projects that bring vitality into the village, they don’t want to “be spending a huge amount of money without a coherent scheme in mind.”
“There’s a reasonably good middle ground that could be shorter-term seating like they do outside of the River Café in Lucan, while we look for the right scheme,” he added.
Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme.
