A FULL MEETING of Dublin City Council is to take place tonight – and there’s just one item on the agenda: the controversial Clontarf sea wall.
In an unusual step, councillors have agreed to hold a full session of the local authority outside of their normal schedule of meetings on the first Monday of each month.
Controversy
The campaign to stop the building of the sea wall along the coastline looking out at Dublin Bay was stepped up by Clontarf and Raheny residents in recent weeks. Some locals unhappy with what they say has been a lack of transparency believed that construction works were for a cycle path and not the seawall.
The wall is part of Dublin City Council plans to have a continuous cycle path running from Sutton to Sandycove.
Planning
Planning permission was granted for the work with notices placed in the area and the plans put on display in the local Raheny library.
However local Fine Gael candidate Stephanie Regan told this website last month that “although the planning was done correctly, it was not done well enough in my view”.
The works will increase the height of the seawall from the Wooden Bridge at Seafield Road in Clontarf to the Causeway in Raheny. The height of the increase is between 20cm and 80cm at various points along the stretch.
Local resident Conor Morrissey, who has been campaigning to stop the building, put together a video showing how views will be impacted.
The Irish Times, quoting Council area manager Dave Dinnigan, reported last week that the local authority had agreed to alter the finish on the wall so it blends in better with the surroundings. The Council has ruled out changing the height, however, due to OPW flood prevention conditions.
In an email to supporters this afternoon, independent Clontarf councillor Damien O’Farrell said that he had instigated a full Council meeting in City Hall to discuss the wall. He and his colleague, TD Finian McGrath, had contacted every councillor in the city area and provided them with photos and information on the project, he wrote.
We’ve been in contact with the city manager Owen Keegan… and I’ll be asking him tonight how he can stand over a process that was so obviously flawed.”
O’Farrell has said he will challenge the project for non-adherence to planning conditions and on other grounds. The project, he told fellow councillors in an email, required “the establishment of an environmental and monitoring liaison committee for the duration of the construction period”. The councillor contends this committee has never met.
Meanwhile, Regan (the Fine Gael candidate) has published a letter she received from city manager Owen Keegan online.
Over the two-and-a-half page letter, he says a proper planning process was observed – and ends by saying that even if he could halt the project he would not be inclined to.
Regan, who had written to Keegan with the signatures of 1,100 fellow residents, said she was now considering legal action.
“I have consulted with legal and engineering professionals, this week and have been informed that I have a ‘stateable case’ to take a legal action against Dublin City Council,” Regan said.
One of the central points of this action, amongst other matters, would be that the notice and the language within the application misdirected the public studiously away from the matter of the sea-wall and to focus on all other matters, such as parking, cycle ways, footpaths etc. The raising of the sea wall was inadequately flagged.”
The meeting Council meeting is set to start at 6.15pm and will be streamed online here.
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