Council Briefs: Letting media back into Fingal SPCs, removing parklets in Howth and Malahide, and swimming pool plans

Letting media back into SPCs

Fingal County Council is set to review its rules which, since last December, have prohibited members of the public and media from attending strategic policy committee meetings.

Those are the meetings at which councillors and representatives from relevant community or lobby groups talk in detail about council policy – in areas such as housing, climate, and transport.

Councillors at their monthly meeting on 9 September were discussing the Draft Strategic Policy Committees Scheme, 2024 to 2029 – which established the seven new SPCs – when Social Democrats Councillor Paul Mulville raised the question of media and public access.

He asked that, as part of the draft scheme, the public and media regain the right to attend the meetings.

But this was the wrong time to raise that, said a response from council officials to his submission to the scheme. Since the question of access relates to the administration of meetings, it falls more within the remit of standing orders – or the council’s chamber rules – than this scheme, it said.

New Department of Housing guidelines for SPCs published in June say that councils should include a provision in their standing orders for public and media to attend the meetings, in accordance with the 2001 Local Government Act, said Mulville.

“So I’m just seeking clarification that that’s the understanding that will be included in our upcoming Standing Order review,” he said.

Social Democrats Councillor Joan Hopkins agreed.

SPCs are one area where councillors are able to change policy and the public can engage, she said. “Anything where we have the media involved, it promotes the SPCs, it actively engages our citizens.”

Independent Councillor Joe Newman said he could go either way on it but that if the media were allowed to attend and report on everything, it would mean there was no need to send out the minutes from those meetings.

“The press will be putting it out there, and the councillors will have sight of it through the press,” he said, rather than by reading about it first in the minutes.

Whatever is said at the SPC should be brought back to the members first when they read and approve the minutes, he said. “And, at that point in time, the media can come in here to listen and make their comment. But you’re not bypassing the councillors.”

Mary Egan, the council’s director of services, said this will be looked at under a review of the standing orders.

“It will have to be done anyway because there are particular changes to the guidelines on SPCs that we will have to incorporate into our own standing orders,” she said, “so we will undertake to have a review of the media question as well.”

Removing parklets

Councillors at the September monthly meeting voiced concerns around Fingal County Council’s proposal to roll back on its “parklets”.

Introduced in October 2020, in response to the pandemic, the council’s “Parklet Partners” scheme offered local businesses a route to turn parking spaces into outdoor dining areas with extra seating.

The parklets were temporary structures and only supposed to last around 18 months, said Stephen Callaghan, acting administrative officer in the council’s operations department, said in a report to the Howth-Malahide Area Committee on 4 September.

Most of them are on public roads, in loading bays or in parking spaces, which have, in some cases, limited access to drains, he said.

“The council have also received complaints from resident’s groups regarding some parklets being used as storage areas rather than outdoor dining, as initially intended,” he said.

The council put in 31 parklets during 2021, his report said. Seventeen have since been removed, and 14 remain, 11 of which are in the Howth-Malahide area.

The council plans to inspect the parklet areas where businesses want to continue and consider them for street furniture licences, he said. “However, the parklet structure itself will need to be removed beforehand.”

Councillors had been told via email on 13 August that the remaining parklets would be removed, said Green Party Councillor David Healy at the full council meeting on Monday.

“Responses to that email came from councillors from all parties across the county to say, ‘Hang on a sec, don’t race into removing the remaining parklets’,” he said.

The council was doing great with small businesses in the pandemic and parklets were a lifeline, said independent Councillor Jimmy Guerin. “Now we’re proposing to take them back, and it’s like removing a seatbelt, in my view, from a car.”

A number of businesses have become accustomed to these, he said. “It’s formed part of their turnover.”

Guerin proposed that the parklet scheme be extended out by another 12 months.

Fianna Fáil Councillor Eoghan O’Brien said the businesses availing of the space should be supported. “Whether that be with footpath build-outs, where we could provide cafe barrier-type things, that it’s not just a case of them being removed.”

Once that space is given over to car parking, it could be much more difficult to use it again for these kinds of measures, he said. “I think it’s a mistake by the council just to automatically go, ‘Right, that parklet’s gone, now it’s a parking space or a loading bay again’.”

Chief Executive AnnMarie Farrelly said the council can do better in the public realm than parklets. “They do deteriorate quite quickly.”

The council can build out footpaths, she said. “The problem is when the parklets were installed that was done quite quickly.”

What needs to be done is a survey to determine what they could be replaced with, she said. “I don’t want to see them replaced with car parking or loading bays.”

The principle of the public realm for outdoor dining is accepted and something the council wants to encourage, she said. “The question is can we do better as a local authority.”

Still seeking swimming pools

Balbriggan is slightly closer to getting a swimming pool.

The council expects to have the feasibility study for a pool in Castlelands ready either in October, said David Storey, director of environment, climate action, active travel and sports in his report on Monday.

But, at the meeting, he said it could be late-October, or November.

Storey said that ReCreation, a UK modular pool expert, was doing the study as well as a business case for the different swimming pool models.

His report came in response to a question by Fianna Fáil Councillor Darragh Butler and a motion by Labour Councillor James Humphreys, who asked the chief executive to include funding for municipal swimming pools in Fingal in its capital budget.

Storey, in his report, wrote that once the study is done, they’ll look at putting that funding in the plan.

“Additionally, Fingal County Council have submitted a ‘Large Scale Sport Infrastructure grant application for the Castlelands Pool,” he wrote.

Humphreys also asked that possible locations for pools be identified in the council’s sports and recreation audit, which Storey said is also due to be completed next month.

The recent success of the Irish swimming teams at the Olympics and Paralympics highlighted the need to invest in a municipal swimming pool, he said. “Especially in Fingal who, currently, we don’t have one.”

Donabate had seen the benefit of a pop-up pool in summer 2023 which was an innovative idea, he said. “They also offer an affordable and a quick solution that is meeting the growing demand.”

It was disappointing that Storey’s report didn’t mention Swords, said Fine Gael Councillor Luke Corkery, asking that the council actively seek out sites – preferably where housing to be built.

“We have a variety of different housing developments in place and in planning, from Mooretown to Seatown to Holywell,” he said.

Fine Gael Councillor Kieran Dennison asked to what extent the council was looking into modular swimming pools in particular, which can be built speedily. “The Olympic swimming pool in Paris was built in 36 days. It’s a modular swimming pool.”

The council doesn’t need to look at digging holes in the ground, or going for expensive builds, he said. “That could be a solution, certainly in the short term to our swimming pool problem.”