Council torn as Donabate group fighting for cultural centre launches judicial review

A Donabate community group is seeking a judicial review of the planning permission granted for the second phase of a big housing development at Ballymastone.

On 13 January, following an appeal, An Bord Pleanála permitted Glenveagh Living Limited to go ahead with building 364 homes on what were council lands.

About 1,200 homes are expected to be built during the three phases of the Ballymaston scheme, one of the largest housing developments in the country.

Of those, 60 percent are to be market-rate homes, 20 percent social homes and 20 percent affordable homes.

But DP Crossroads – a local residents’ group with some councillors involved – has long sought more community infrastructure, beyond sports facilities, as part of the build. It wants a cultural and youth centre.

The group submitted papers seeking the judicial review on 10 March, court records show.

The move sparked loud debate within Fingal County Council chambers during the March monthly meeting that evening – with accusations flying that the judicial review was taken in bad faith, and that it jeopardised the planned construction of a €10 million sports hub at Ballymaston.

A council spokesperson said Tuesday that the judicial review will delay the second phase of the major project, which consists of 364 homes, and will affect the sports hub.

Guerin’s motion

Construction on 432 homes in phase one at Ballymastone has been underway since August 2023.

Meanwhile, phase two, now in dispute, has been working its way through the planning system.

In August last year, Fingal County Council planners approved Glenveagh’s proposal for the second phase.

DP Crossroads was one of three parties who appealed that decision to An Bord Pleanála.

A community facility should be provided in the development in accordance with the Donabate local area plan, the group argued.

At Fingal’s monthly council meeting on 10 March, independent Councillor Jimmy Guerin tabled a motion asking elected representatives, “in light of recent developments and the current housing crisis” to reiterate their support for the Ballymastone project and the council executive’s initiatives to deliver housing.

The mood within the chamber was already tense after a previous motion on the tenant-in-situ scheme and recriminations between Fine Gael and Sinn Féin members.

And it was after 8pm. Guerin submitted the motion three hours and one extension into the meeting.

Guerin hadn’t wanted to bring the motion, he said. But he was concerned at the group’s decision to hold a public meeting a week earlier.

Guerin hadn’t been at it.

But he was told that the group had been considering ways to pressure the council to deliver a cultural centre, he said. “As the one outside the door is not near enough.”

This centre “outside the door” was a reference to Donabate’s current community centre on the Portrane Road.

Space in the building is supposed to free up once the library is moved to nearby Ballisk House, a former credit union.

Labour Councillor Corina Johnston has said that won’t do enough to address the shortage of community infrastructure, as the area’s population grows.

The audience at the campaign group’s meeting were presented with “motions” to try to get Glenveagh to deliver community infrastructure with the houses, said Guerin.

Those included a protest, email campaign to the council’s chief executive, and a judicial review, he said, alleging that DP Crossroads’ review was intended to delay construction in Ballymastone in order to get the council to meet their demands.

Guerin pointed out that three councillors – Johnston, the Social Democrats’ Paul Mulville and Fine Gael’s Eoghan Dockrell – are on DP Crossroads’ committee.

At the council meeting the evening of 10 March, Labour councillors Brendan Ryan and Brian McDonagh, the chairperson, warned Guerin about directly discussing the judicial review.

Guerin said he was addressing it with caution.

Mulville, the Social Democrats councillor, said Guerin was imputing improper motives against members of the council. “I’m actually shocked from what I’m hearing from councillor Guerin.”

Suggesting that a judicial review had been launched to delay the delivery of housing was false too, said Mulville. “A judicial review has been taken in terms of planning advice received on planning grounds. It’s absolutely shocking what he’s saying.”

Guerin said he wouldn’t withdraw the claim that any actions were intended to apply pressure, he said.

The public meeting

The public meeting in Donabate took place on the evening of Wednesday 5 March in the Shoreline Hotel.

It was a community meeting, says an announcement on the group’s Facebook page inviting locals to help decide a direction forward for the campaign.

Ann Hogan, the group’s chairperson, said they were looking to better engage with the community in Donabate and Portrane.

“It was to get ideas and feedback, just because this was about the community,” said Hogan last Wednesday.

About 120 people showed up, she said.

The meeting stretched almost three hours, said Fine Gael Councillor Eoghan Dockrell, who was in attendance.

“For the most part, it was a listening exercise where the DP Crossroads group wanted to listen to different groups, and hear from them what they thought about a cultural youth centre,” he said.

The atmosphere, for the most part, was positive, he said. “The community was united in the need to ensure there was adequate infrastructure to match a rapidly growing population.”

Hogan chaired the discussion and told those gathered about steps they had been considering. “We wanted to get a general sense of what people are comfortable with,” she says.

Suggestions included press coverage, a social-media campaign, another petition, a protest, and a judicial review, she said. “That was discussed, and the majority of people said you need to do this.”

The judicial review stems from what they argue are breaches of the local area plan and planning legislation, she says.

“That’s why we decided then to take the judicial review, because even though we’ve highlighted this to the county, we just need the social infrastructure,” she says.

A strategic aim in the Donabate local area plan – which first ran from 2016 to 2020 and was later extended until 2026 – is to deliver community infrastructure in tandem with the phased development of new homes.

But a social and community infrastructure audit submitted by Glenveagh as part of its planning application for phase two of the housing scheme concluded that they didn’t need to include any community facilities in this phase.

“We submit that there are established and yet to be delivered community facilities which will meet the demand created by the future residents of the proposed development,” its audit said, pointing to the council’s recreational hub which is planned nearby.

Residents were nonplussed, they said.

The audit had said that Donabate has a swimming pool when it doesn’t. And, that it had three GPs when it actually has two.

Divisive rhetoric

At the meeting, Guerin said the case taken by DP Crossroads could delay the second phase of construction at Ballymastone.

Independent Councillor Tony Murphy said people looking to buy affordable housing could be denied an opportunity because of this delay.

“This is nothing more than NIMBYism, and trying to arm wrestle Fingal County Council into position to give something that wasn’t agreed on the floor in the council,” he said.

Donabate’s local area plan was adopted by the council and many councillors in the chamber, said Johnston, the Labour councillor.

She was very much in favour of housing, she said, contrary to what was being suggested.

The local area plan outlines 4,000 new houses in Donabate, most of which have been either granted permission or are under construction, she said. “Bar phase three of Ballymastone.”

Donabate is embracing the houses, she said.

Dockrell, the Fine Gael councillor, said he is fully in support of building social and affordable homes. At the public meeting, he mostly talked about that.

But the three councillors who went to the public meeting had been told non-stop while door knocking before elections that Donabate needs community infrastructure, he said.

“It’s divisive to say, from members who don’t know Donabate and Portrane as well as we do, that this was an anti-housing sentiment,” he said.

Local councillors have also put in motions at area committees, with the support of other members, to lobby for multi-functional community facilities, Johnston said. “It is very clear that the council do not want to provide this facility.”

AnnMarie Farrelly, the council’s chief executive, said that to further the local area plan, the council was investing €4 million in a refurbishment of the existing Donabate-Portrane community centre, and €1.9 million in the new library in Ballisk House.

“That project is on site as we speak,” she said.

Independents 4 Change Councillor Dean Mulligan said people living in Donabate are dealing with a dearth of basic infrastructure, including regular power outages, packed trains and a privatised local bus link.

Planning applications aren’t dealing with infrastructure, he said. “At this moment, the current residents of Donabate would tell you, while it’s a beautiful coastal peninsula and a fabulous area to walk around, it is absolutely deprived of the necessary infrastructure needed to make it grow.”

If he could afford it, he would move to Donabate, he said. “But I wouldn’t be able to, because I’d have to drive. The infrastructure isn’t there.”

Guerin’s original motion was amended to say that the council would ensure it kept to the objectives of the Donabate local area plan by delivering community and physical infrastructure in tandem with the phased development of housing.

The motion was then agreed.

On Sunday, Labour Councillor Corina Johnston said she was appalled by the statements made at the 10 March council meeting in relation to the public meeting. None of the councillors making the claims were in attendance, she said.

The meeting was about an ongoing campaign for a multifunctional arts, youth and cultural facility, she said.

The sports hub

At the 10 March meeting, Fianna Fáil Councillor Darragh Butler asked Farrelly, the council’s chief executive, what impact the judicial review will have on the sports and recreational hub.

The hub, which councillors approved on 13 September 2021, is due to be delivered by the council as part of the Ballymastone project, and is set to consist of all-weather GAA and soccer pitches, an athletics track, playground and skate park.

Funding for the €10 million project has been identified through the government’s Service Sites Fund,  says a 13 March council press release.

The drawdown of that funding is dependent on the construction of affordable and social homes on the adjoining Balmaston site, a council spokesperson said on Tuesday.

If that social and affordable housing isn’t delivered, the sports hub would be gone, Butler said at the meeting.

The judicial review, lodged on 10 March, will delay the second phase of the project, which consists of 364 homes, a council spokesperson said, “and jeopardise the funding”.