In Drimnagh, a push to reopen a park that’s been locked up for years

On Monday morning about 9am, across the road from the Blackhorse Luas stop in Inchicore, a man walked into Lansdowne Valley Park.

As the sun rose higher in the sky and the day heated up into another summer scorcher, he walked in his hi-vis vest and backpack on a paved path south into Drimnagh.

He followed the Camac River along for a while but then – after about 600 metres – the path hit a barrier of shrubs and fences, and looped back north towards Inchicore.

The southern half of this snaky park along the river, where there used to be a pitch and putt course, has for years been closed off to the public with high metal fences and gates.

For residents of Drimnagh who live around this closed-off piece of park – roughly 500 metres long by 75 metres wide – this has been an ongoing frustration.

“The people living around the pitch and putt course they’re short of parkspace, there’s no playgrounds in the area,” said Green Party Councillor Ray Cunningham.

In a question submitted to council managers, Labour Councillor Darragh Moriarty wrote that “Many local children are playing on roads and residents have to walk to Blackhorse to access the park.”

So councillors have been pushing council managers to unlock this part of the park for years.

In July, the South Central Area Committee backed a motion from Cunningham calling for a timeline for reopening it.

“It’s a real waste of public space, we should get it open as quickly as possible,” Cunningham said at the meeting, speaking in support of his motion.

In response, area manager Alan Sherry said, “We’ll try and seek a timetable as quickly as possible from the parks department about that.”

“Missed a trick”

On Monday morning about 10am, the green metal gates at the entrance to the park from Slievebloom Road in Drimnagh were chained shut.

A red and white sign said “No Access”, and had a picture of a creepy looking figure holding up their hand to indicate that anyone considering walking that way should not.

A few metres from this entrance, standing in the doorway to her home, Joan McGrane says she remembers when the park was vacant land attracting dumping and antisocial behaviour, and when it opened as a pitch and putt.

“When we first moved here it was derelict and there was a fight to get it cleaned up,” McGrane said. “When it was turned into a pitch and putt we were happy with that.”

In April 2017, the gate to the pitch and putt course was still open – although there were no tees out, no markers on holes, and there was nowhere to hire equipment.

Back then, councillors on the South Central Area Committee were discussing a proposal to get it back into use by allowing Ronan Cunningham to operate it as a footgolf course.

Footgold “mixes the best parts of football with the best parts of golf”, Cunningham said at the time. “Essentially, you are kicking a football from tee to green, in the shortest number of shots.”

The committee unanimously backed the proposal. But that’s as far as it went, Cunningham said by phone on Friday.

He says that after the vote he went in for a meeting with council managers, thinking he was going to get the green light to go ahead.

Instead, “the head brass at the council shot it down”, he said. “They said there was a plan to put a cycle track through there in the next 18 months.”

“I couldn’t have come out of that meeting more deflated,” Cunningham said.

So he moved on, including continuing to operate Footee, a footgolf course in Tallaght that’s been going for 12 years now, he says.

Meanwhile, the cycle track he was told in 2017 was coming within 18 months hasn’t been built, and the former pitch and putt course has been sitting unused.

Google Street View images show the Slievebloom Road entrance open in 2019, but closed since then.

“I think they [Dublin City Council] definitely missed a trick,” Cunningham said Friday.

Dublin City Council hasn’t responded to queries sent Friday on why that cycle track hasn’t yet been built.

Or whether there’s any reason Cunningham couldn’t have been operating his footgolf business in the park, as councillors had wanted, for the past seven years.

“In due course”

In September 2023, Green Party Councillor Michael Pidgeon submitted a written question to council managers asking when the southern end of Lansdowne Valley Park would be reopened.

The response he got back was that the council’s parks department was working on reopening it.

“As part of this a new network of footpaths will need to be designed, tendered and constructed. The councillor will be updated in due course,” the response said.

In May 2024, Patrick Dempsey was standing for election for Labour, and hearing a lot about the closed park on the doors, he says.

So he asked his party colleague Darragh Moriarty, a councillor then and now, to submit a query to council managers for him about the issue.

They got the same answer back as Pidgeon had: we’re working on it, we’ll tell you something when we have something to tell you.

In the June election, Cunningham was elected as a councillor for the area, and he put in his motion.

“The committee calls on the Parks department to provide a timetable for the opening of this space as a park, connecting through to Lansdowne Valley Park, and to include a playground and community garden in the park plans,” it said.

At the July area committee meeting, Sinn Féin Councillor Daithí Doolan said he’d heard a lot about the closed bit of the park on the doors during the election.

“Some residents have felt under threat by what goes on in the park now that it has fallen into disuse. Antisocial behaviour, drug use, drug dealing, etcetera,” he said.

“The best way, and the long-term way of dealing with this is by turning that park into some positive use for the community,” he said.

“Dublin’s crying out for parks and greenspace,” he said. “Let’s get a time frame in place, and let’s get action as quickly as possible.”

“A park would be great”

McGrane, standing in her doorway near the locked-up entrance to the southern end of the park on Monday, said she’d support the park being reopened.

She and her husband are in their 70s, and it’d be a 25-plus-minute walk to get to Blackhorse to get into the park adjoining their home.

“A park would be great, we’ve no objection to that,” McGrane says. “We were afraid they might build housing there.”

But “it’s like everything else: will it be used or misused?” she said. “We don’t want loitering, because of the way drugs are going.”

McGrane said she’s a bit worried that reopening the gate might attract more antisocial behaviour, she says.

If the pitch and putt is reopened as a park, she’d want to see the lane into it from the gate next to her house “properly maintained”, and the gate locked at night, she said.