Council approves plans for Mountjoy Square Park, but there is still confusion over playgrounds and sports

Dublin City Council approved a plan on Monday to revamp Mountjoy Square, but there’s still some confusion and apprehension about how the new park will work for the local community. 

The plan is to restore the park in line with its Georgian heritage but allowing for contemporary uses, said Gareth Toolan, the council landscape architect. 

Toolan said at the meeting that a new central lawn will be 4,000 square metres and will be “a multi-use flexible space that all can use, rather than one group or team owning it.”

Still, many locals say that the design means less space in practice for sports and playgrounds, in an area starved of such amenities.

“We use that park as our outdoor space; it is essential for us,” says Geraldine O’Driscoll, a manager with the Society of St Vincent de Paul, who runs an early-years service at Ozanam House on Mountjoy Square.

Lots of the children live in homeless accommodation, she says. At the moment, four staff can take around 22 of the kids aged between two and five to the playground at one time, says O’Driscoll.

But that only works because the playground is concentrated in one corner of the large park, and the part of the playground that is for toddlers is fenced in. 

The council’s new plan for the park does not include a designated playground. Instead, it envisions, “The strategic installation of engaging play elements along the historic park’s serpentine paths, creating an innovative play trail.” 

“The play trail won’t work for us,” says O’Driscoll, by phone, and they told the council that in a submission to the public consultation.

She also thinks the new design won’t work for large families. “Kids will run in lots of different directions,” she says. 

At Monday’s meeting, most councillors voted for the plans, 44-17. The Labour Party, Sinn Féin, People Before Profit and some independent councillors voted against.

After the vote, O’Driscoll says she still isn’t clear if there is still a chance the council will include a fenced-off playground after all, because some councillors said changes could be made later at the “detailed design” stage. 

Another thing that remains unclear, even as the plan moves forward, is whether organised sport will be allowed on the park’s big, new grassy lawn. 

“I’ve been given mixed messages,” says Jack O’Brien, a community co-ordinator with Bohemian Football Club, who runs sports activities in the park. 

The plans

The council has been working for years on plans to revamp Mountjoy Square Park.

The park currently has big grassy areas and trees, paths to walk, and benches to sit on – and there’s a creche inside it. 

There’s also a big tarmac area for sport, some outdoor gym equipment, a basketball court, and a playground – part of which is designed for smaller kids and is surrounded by a low fence. 

There’s a fence around the perimeter of the park, separating if from the roads that surround it. 

In January, the council unveiled a proposed project to reimagine the park within the context of its original 1802 design, according to a council report, restoring its railings and adding 84 “oil” lamps around the park’s edges. 

The plans show grassy areas and trees, and paths to walk on, and benches to sit on, as well as a public toilet – and the creche still there. 

But the current tarmac sports area, basketball court, and existing playgrounds are gone. 

The new design shows big grassy lawns, a basketball hoop, an outdoor gym, and pieces of play equipment dotted throughout the park.

A large lawn area in the design can be used for general recreation, events or sports activities, a council official said in May. 

The council received 196 submissions to a public consultation on its plans for the park, with many welcoming the upgrade.

But submissions also flagged concerns about the need for better maintenance and security, the protection of the existing sports facilities, and the need to expand and upgrade the playground, according to the council’s report. 

“We are going to put forward dedicated staff and gardeners that can maintain the park at all times,” said Toolan, at the meeting. 

Confusion about playgrounds

The existing playground is extremely well used by local parents, local primary schools, early years services and after-school services, says O’Driscoll. 

“The play trail doesn’t serve the same function as the playground, in an area that really lacks playgrounds,” she said.

Diamond Park, about 350m south of Mountjoy Square, used to have a playground, but someone burned it down in May and now it’s gone.

At the meeting on Monday, Social Democrats Councillor Cat O’Driscoll said she shared those concerns, but she backed the plans, saying that more children’s play spaces can be incorporated at the detailed design phase.

“While there isn’t currently a space [in the plans] where you can bring in more than two or three children,” she says, she hoped that could be addressed later. 

But Kieran Rose, a former council planner, said later by phone that, “Whether there is a separate playground in the scheme is not a matter of detailed design.” 

Both the play equipment and the fencing-off would usually be part of the core design, not the detailed design, Rose says. 

Dublin City Council didn’t respond yet to queries sent Wednesday, including whether it will provide a fenced-in children's playground at Mountjoy Square. 

Social Democrats Councillor Karl Stanley, who voted for the plan, said by phone on Wednesday that he thinks some more play equipment could be incorporated into the plans, but he doesn’t think the council will install a fenced-off playground. 

The vision for the park is just quite different. The park is not ornamental, said council landscape architect Gareth Toolan. 

But “we should be supporting soft play, tactile play in nature”, he said. There will be more pieces of play equipment in the new park – going from six pieces to 20, he said.

Confusion about sports, still

At the meeting Monday, most of the conversation about the park plan surrounded whether sports can be played on the big grassy lawn. 

This has been an ongoing saga since last November, when Dublin Live reported that the plans included a “FIFA-grade pitch”.  

That came after Toolan, the council landscape architect, said at a council meeting that the “pitch-lawn area” would have FIFA-grade grass. 

It is still not clear whether organised sports or training will be allowed on the large, grassy lawn. 

But the park is intensively used for sports at the moment. “We’ll be doing football throughout the summer at Mountjoy Park,” says O’Brien, who runs Bohs Play for kids aged six to 12.

The programme is funded by the North East Inner City Initiative and takes place in council flat complexes and on Mountjoy Square Park, which is the only space big enough to allow them to run multiple matches at one time, he says. 

“There are extremely limited options for a part of the city with thousands of people who want to play football,” O’Brien says. 

He usually has two to four games going at once, and often community gardaí help referee the games, he says. 

Many of the children live in emergency accommodation and IPAS accommodation, he says, and often Bohs Play is their only after-school activity. 

The basketball court at Diamond Park is also extremely well used, says O’Brien. “There is serious competition for spaces.”

O’Brien says he still doesn’t know whether the Bohs Play games will be able to continue on the grassy lawn at Mountjoy Square Park after the redevelopment, because different councillors and council officials have told him different things. 

Because the park is so well used, he doesn’t know if sharing space will work, he says. 

Stanley, the Social Democrats councillor, said he has been told that local sports clubs can bring in movable goals and train children on the new lawn. 

“My understanding from all the conversations was that children’s under-12 academies can take place there,” he said. 

This seems, though, to clash with the council report, which says that “informal sports” would be permitted on the lawn, together with other uses.

Council managers did not clarify this situation at the meeting on Monday. 

Green Party Councillor Janet Horner, who voted for the plan, said her understanding is that people can kick a ball around, maybe run drills with kids, but since there will be no booking system, clubs running training won’t be possible. 

Labour Councillor Darragh Moriarty, who voted against the plan, said at the meeting his party could not support it, as it reduces access to sports facilities. 

“I appreciate the motivation behind trying to restore Mountjoy Square Park back to a former Georgian garden,” Moriarty said, but “communities have had to make do with very limited community resources and very limited green spaces.”

He doesn’t think the central lawn will be available for football. If families are having picnics, how can sports groups move them off? he asked. 

Stanley, the Social Democrats councillor, said that in Marino, clubs bring movable goals and share space with other park users. Green Party Councillor Donna Cooney said the same at the meeting.

Labour Party Councillor Alison Field said her son goes to school in the north inner-city, and there’s such a shortage of pitches that it’s trying to get an astroturf pitch installed on its roof. About half the kids in his school live in emergency accommodation, she said. 

Toolan, the council landscape architect, said that “what we are trying to do with the multi-space lawn area is to create a space for everybody and a focal point while respecting the historic design principles of the space”.