Council briefs: Enthusiasm for a Valentine’s Quarter, permeable paving at Herzog Park, and Dodder flood defences

A saintly matter

The council should establish a Valentine Quarter in the Whitefriar Street area, independent Councillor Mannix Flynn proposed at the South East Area Committee meeting on Monday.

Flynn had proposed the motion because the Whitefriar Street Carmelite Church has a shrine to – and relics of – the patron saint of love (as well as plague, fainting and beekeeping).

It was an idea that the council looked into in some detail back in 2016, Brian Hanney, the area manager for the South East Inner City and Pembroke, said in a response to Flynn’s motion.

The council’s South East Area Office and City Architects initiated a series of meetings with the Whitefriar Street Church as well as Fáilte Ireland to investigate the church’s relics and the area’s tourism potential, Hanney said.

But, while the relics of the saint are the most famous ones in the church, its priests were anxious that other saints weren’t overshadowed by St Valentine, Hanney said.

“[They] wish to exercise some control over what a new tourist attraction may convey,” he said.

The church already provided special services to celebrate St. Valentine, but they would need to be consulted about any new plans “for a St Valentine’s Day festival”, he said.

It was an interesting response, but he had never suggested a St Valentine Quarter, Flynn said. “So with all due respect to the Catholic Church and the remains of the relics of St Valentine’s, that’s a separate issue.”

Flynn wants to designate it as the Valentine Quarter, he said.

It shouldn’t focus on the saintly side of the name Valentine, but rather on the international day itself which evolved out of his legacy, Flynn said. “No card has St Valentine’s Day on it. It’s just Valentine’s Day.”

“It’s a global thing about love and romantic love, which is identified in all cultures, and I want all cultures to come into that particular area for celebrations,” he said.

Labour councillors Dermot Lacey and Fiona Connelly both said they really loved the motion.

It was important to sell the second story about this particular area, Connelly said. “Curating that story is really important and I really like that it’s an inclusive naming.”

It was good that Flynn’s motion wasn’t aligning itself with one particular side of the Valentine name, she said.

The motion was agreed, and referred to the economic development committee.

Changes, in all but name

At a meeting of the council’s South East Area Committee on Monday, executive engineer James Kelly told councillors about plans to put in permeable paving in the car park at Rathgar’s Herzog Park.

The River Dodder is less than 500 metres away, said Kelly, the project’s manager.

All the rain that lands in the park is meant to go via a combined sewer down to the treatment plant in Ringsend, he said. “But because there’s capacity issues with the sewer, it frequently overflows into the River Dodder.”

The Dodder’s water quality is classified as “moderate”, Kelly said, and the council aims to up this to a rating of “good”. This project is important to keep pollutants out of the river, he said.

“It’s to remove water from getting into the sewer,” he said. The rain will permeate through the new surface and into the ground, he said.

“There is also an overflow to the sewer during a very heavy rainfall event so that there won’t be any flooding in the area,” he said.

And, to avoid any disruption, the project is going to be split into four phases, so that there will be car parking spaces available as it goes on, he said.

The council will aim to finalise its designs before the end of the first quarter, and get a contractor on board by the end of the second, Kelly said.

Sorting the problem there with Japanese knotweed will be part of the project, he said.

While the new plans were welcomed by committee members, these weren’t the only changes that some councillors were hoping to see.

Sinn Féin Councillor Kourtney Kenny used the moment to raise the matter of the park’s name, which was chosen to honour Chaim Herzog, the sixth president of Israel.

The park, formerly Orwell Park, was renamed in 1995. More recently, in light of the ongoing genocide by Israel in Gaza, a campaign was launched to rename it again.

Independents 4 Change Councillor Pat Dunne said that given both the onslaught in Gaza and the Israeli government’s withdrawal of its embassy from Ireland, the name should be withdrawn.

“And replace it maybe with a name that reflects the struggle of the Palestinian people,” Dunne said.

Kelly, an engineer, wasn’t in a position to respond to the naming issue, said Labour Party Councillor Dermot Lacey, who was chairing the meeting.

Poddle flood defences

Costs for the long-awaited River Poddle flood alleviation scheme – which is about to start in Dublin city – have risen to €12 million, according to an update from senior engineer Gerard O’Connell on Monday.

Previously, the estimate had been €9 million, O’Connell told councillors at the meeting.

The project is a joint effort by Dublin City Council and South Dublin County Council, O’Connell told members of the South East Area Committee.

Over in South Dublin, a new dam, an earthen embankment, in Tymon Park has now been completed and is operational, O’Connell said. “That reduces the flood damage downstream in Kimmage and Harold’s Cross and into the city.”

Now Dublin City Council is set to start work on a segment of the scheme in Ravensdale Park, first by cutting some trees in February. “Fortunately, many of the trees aren’t native species,” O’Connell said.

There will be a three-to-one ratio of tree removal and replacement, he said, meaning there will be a reduction in the number of trees. But they do have plans to put trees outside the park, he said.

“I’m told there are too many,” he said. “They are interfering with each other according to our environmental experts.”

Back in 2019, locals in Crumlin had expressed a desire to see more nature-based solutions instead of hard defences, like walls, which would push the issue downstream. And there are plans to roll some of these out, O’Connell said.

In Poddle Park, over in Terenure, a new pedestrian bridge is planned, he said. But the park is also set to see a reduction in its trees in order to make way for the planned defence walls, as is St Martin’s Drive in Kimmage.

However, the number that St Martin’s will lose has been lowered from 70 to about 20. “That is the option approved by An Bord Pleanála.”

With work set to start in February, there is roughly a two- to three-year timescale for Dublin City Council’s section of the programme, he said, before noting that previous estimates for the cost were €8 to €9 million.

That is now up to €12 million, he said. “Construction costs have increased quite significantly, even in the last year, on all projects.”

But, of the €12, only about €2.5 million of the works will be in the Dublin city area – as South Dublin is the lead on this project, he said.