Council Briefs: Free parking at Portobello Plaza, opening up playing pitches in Terenure to more clubs, and more

A little more than two years ago, Dublin City Council granted permission for developers MKN Property to put up wooden hoardings around most of Portobello Plaza while it built a hotel.

On 19 December, the hoardings came down and the NYX Hotel Dublin at Portobello Harbour was unveiled.

But, while the public square is now accessible again to the public, the council’s promised refurbishment remains a ways off.

Green Party Councillor Claire Byrne was vocal in expressing disappointment at the timeline at the South East Area Committee on 8 January.

Byrne had submitted a motion requesting that the Parks Department urgently move forward with the redesign.

A written response from Deirdre Prince, the council’s executive parks and landscape officer, said the pre-Part 8 planning consultations are currently being finalised with the environment and transport departments.

“[O]nce completed, the intention is that the Part 8 application process will commence in Q1 2024,” Prince said. (Part 8 is the planning process that the council goes through for its own projects.)

It could be six months to a year before anything happens now on a project that has been gestating since late 2018, Byrne said. “And we were told in May, which is still four-and-a-half years later, that they would be turning the sod in December.”

Byrne said she couldn’t understand the delay. “How has it taken this long? We first secured the funding for this, forty grand for the redesign of Portobello Harbour in 2019 after the hotel first got planning permission.”

She repeatedly asked that works on the plaza and hotel be carried out concurrently, Byrne said, “so we don’t end up in a situation where the hotel is open, a hotel that nobody wanted, that is absolutely not needed, is now open, and we still don’t have a firm plan in place”.

To cap this off, the Green Party councillor said, vehicles are now parking outside the hotel on the public plaza. “Not only that, but service delivery trucks are also driving onto the public space.”

There is a designated service area in the planning conditions, she said.

Byrne asked for something temporary, like planters, to be put in to stop vehicles driving up onto the plaza.

Sinn Féin Councillor Daniel Céitinn queried why the plaza is currently tarmaced. “Why was it deemed acceptable to open it with tarmac?

Fine Gael Councillor Danny Byrne said the scenario is embarrassing for public representatives given that cars are now parking on the plaza.

“We’re years and years and years of scratching our heads of what to do with this park. We’ve already had the public consultation. Let’s move on. Let’s get it done,” he said.

Leslie Moore, the council’s head of parks, said there were issues that had to be teased out with the environment and transport departments in relation to cycling. “We think we have that all resolved.”

The council is now referring to the plaza as Portobello Harbour Park, because it has the potential to be a park rather than a hard-surfaced plaza, he said. “We’re going to develop it much more to give it a feel of a park.”

To stop cars parking up, the council will also be installing bollards or planters in the coming week, he said.

Access to playing pitches

Council officials have been meeting with the City of Dublin Education and Training Board (CDETB) to try to work out a deal so that more community clubs can use its playing pitches in Terenure.

Social Democrats Councillor Tara Deacy brought forward a motion to the South East Area Committee asking for clarification from the CDETB about its sportsground there.

Deacy made the request, in her motion, to help councillors as they looked at how the council would allocate pitches to different sports clubs in the coming year.

At the meeting, Leslie Moore, the council’s head of parks, said the council has 42 playing fields within nine parks across its South East administrative area. Of those, 22 are for soccer and 10 are for GAA games.

The council has met with the CDETB in relation to the lands at Terenure to see if these could be opened as a public park, Moore said. “That would open up the playing fields to community clubs, although community clubs are using those facilities already.”

But, the council doesn’t have a plan for these lands yet, he said. “Really what we’re trying to do is put in place an agreement whereby we can take it over as a park and then allocate whatever available timeslots are available to local clubs.”

Because some clubs and school teams are using the pitches, the council needs to know what the CDETB’s current allocations are. “Then we would be able to see what slack there is in terms of reallocating.”

Discussions are ongoing, Moore told the committee.

There is currently a shortage of pitches across the city, Deacy told the committee, suggesting that the likes of the Gaelic Athletics Association, the Football Association of Ireland, the Vocational Education Committee and the council should meet to discuss how lands can be used more appropriately.

But Moore said there aren’t any parks or open spaces that are currently underused in Dublin. “We’re under huge pressure in our parks to provide playing fields.”

Anybody aware of any park, open space or pitch that is underused should inform the parks department, he said. “We don’t have any other spaces to provide playing fields in the south-east part of the city.”

Lotts of enforcement issues

Green Party Councillor Claire Byrne also tabled a motion at the committee pointing to possible planning issues around the Tesco Superstore on South Lotts Road.

The Dublin 4 branch was opened by the supermarket chain in August 2022. At the meeting, Byrne flagged obstructions caused by the articulated lorries delivering to the store multiple times a day.

This may constitute a breach of planning conditions, she said.

In a report on this motion, Heidi Thorsdalen, a senior executive planner in the transportation planning division, said that if loading arrangements laid out in the planning application were not followed, that info should be forwarded to planning enforcement.

But Byrne said the matter had been raised with planning enforcement by local residents. “And nothing has happened.”

No delivery management plan was submitted to An Bord Pleanála by Alasta Co., nor was any such plan conditioned by the board when it granted permission in May 2020, Thorsdalen wrote.

A spokesperson for Tesco said that it delivers twice daily to the South Lotts Road store between 8am and 10am, and from 10.30am until 11.30am.

Customers were also parking on footpaths in the area, causing similar obstructions, Byrne said in her motion.

“This has been an ongoing issue that has been raised,” she said.

Elaine Norton, the current acting administrative officer for parking policy, said that the Dublin Street Parking Services – the company that has the council parking-enforcement contract – will monitor the location and take enforcement action where required.

The Tesco spokesperson said that parking around this store is pay and display, and as such, is monitored and managed by the council.

Neil O’Donoghue, a council senior engineer, said at the area committee, the alleged breaches are currently with planning enforcement.

He added that he will be engaging with parking enforcement to make sure there is no parking on the footpath.

As a condition of An Bord Pleanála’s planning permission, the developer is also obliged to carry out public-realm upgrades, which Brian Kirk, a South East Area administrative officer confirmed were at the draft design stage.