The Sandymount and Merrion Residents Association, SAMRA, called a second Emergency General Meeting at 8pm on the evening of 10th March last in The Mount Herbert Hotel.

Lorna Kelly spoke and said that the DDDA made ‘thanks to the residents of the surrounding area for their contribution to their scheme’ and she wished it to be on the record that at no time did SAMRA contribute to the DDDA plan.

Guest speaker Joe McCarthy said that work on the building of the Incinerator had already commenced and then outlined how he and some others had been involved in a Special Interest Group for Environment and Sustainability set up by the DDDA to look more closely at environmental matters.

He showed a copy of the Draft Planning Scheme from the DDDA which they only received on the 4th February along with a 1,000 page Environmental Impact Statement that he and Valerie Jennings had tried to analyse.

He mentioned how the DDDA had these documents for a year or so and now he has to respond by 9th April when the consultation phase closes and the Environment Minister decides as to whether the plan goes ahead or not.

Joe McCarthy showed the audience a large brochure called ‘Poolbeg Awakens’, by a Dutch firm called West 8 who had carried out all the preparative design work. The DDDA Draft Plans involved a model analysis of the buildings across from the land owned by Becbay, a consortium with Ben McNamara, Derek Quinlan and the Anglo Irish Bank, and the strip owned by Liam Carroll’s Fabrizia development company, with varying densities for each area and a Luas running through Sean Moore Park into Sandymount.

He explained how there was in fact only a small amount of ‘brownfield’ land available as most of the DDDA sites were actually ‘greenfield’ land and that the required rules for greenfield had not been adhered to in the proposals, with much less open space and more building density proposed than is regulated for.

Joe McCarthy then showed that in fact there was no new open space to be gained and if anything there was a reduction. He said that he had written to Paul Maloney of the DDDA pointing out to him that the SIG consultation process had resulted in obfuscation, denial of the existence of documents, refusal to produce documents, site models, etc., and could only be described as a waste of time.

He showed how the scheme involved raising up the Poolbeg land by up to 10 metres and this would offer the new buildings protection from flooding but was likely to cause flooding in Sandymount worse than the flood of February 2002.

Joe McCarthy showed a shadow projection over the existing houses on Sean Moore Road, which illustrated that during winter months the residents there will be in the shade for much of the time. He said that the buildings modelled by the DDDA were based on inaccurate ground levels and that this made all their shadow projections incorrect.

Recently Minister John Gormley appointed Yvonne Farrell of Grafton Architects to the DDDA Board, Ben McNamara’s sister Shelly is also a co-director of Grafton architects.

At the end of the meeting residents were given the opportunity to sign a petition as follows:
‘We, the undersigned, object to the proposed Docklands Section 25 Planning Scheme for the Poolbeg peninsula by reason of the destruction of a priceless natural amenity, the overpowering visual impact on the Sandymount and Merrion areas of Dublin Bay, the required public cost of providing all the infrastructural services, interference with the shorelines, the raising of the Poolbeg ground levels with imported rock and rubble with the probable consequence of flooding Sandymount, the serious direct and indirect impacts on the existing protected wildlife and biodiversity, and probable pollution of sea and beaches from disturbance of the contaminated land.’

The Sandymount Village Design Statement
The first meeting of the Steering Group for the Dublin City Council sponsored Village Design Statement took place on Monday 23rd February in the Community Centre in Thorncastle Street, Ringsend. The meeting was organised by Peter Morley and from a panel, the following people were selected to take part in the Steering Committee. These are:

Michael Byrne, Victualler (traders rep)
John MacAlinden Post Office (traders rep).
Joe McCarthy
Lorna Kelly
Aine Ni Chaoimh
Tony Read
Joe McCann

Two councillors as well as management from Dublin City Council will also be co-opted to the Steering Group.