Council managers push forward with plan for a smaller Bull Island Discovery Centre

The council appears to be pressing ahead with its plan for a new Dublin Bay Discovery Centre on Bull Island, while conservationists and some local councillors still aren’t totally convinced. 

Independent Councillor John Lyons asked for an update on the proposed centre at Monday’s monthly council meeting. 

Council Chief Executive Richard Shakespeare said a pared-back version of the original plan was in the works.

“I know that that has been watered down, you know, in terms of size and scale,” said Shakespeare. “I think there still is a need to provide something.”

In early 2024, the plan was for an €18.7 million centre but during a consultation on that, the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage raised doubts about the viability of the project.

“The Department is not confident that if the provision of the Discovery Centre were to attract more visitors to Bull Island that there might not be increased adverse effects,” according to a submission from the department’s Edel Griffin.

Later that year, Lyons urged the council to drop the idea, and reallocate the money to community facilities in the wider area.

At Monday’s meeting, in response to Shakespeare’s update, Lyons said that “thankfully the allocated budget is slightly reduced”.

Years in the making

For years, Les Moore, the city parks superintendent, had been pushing the project forward, and giving presentations to councillors on its progress.

In 2015, the council published plans for a three-storey discovery centre on the entry via the causeway. By 2019, that vision had been scaled down. 

“Fundamentally, through the Discovery Centre we want to help people understand and appreciate this special place [Dublin Bay],” according to the 2019 update from Moore and project manager Donncha Ó Dúlaing.

A 2021 update on the project said the island gets about 1 million visitors a year and the centre wouldn’t add much to this. “Modest visitor numbers being envisaged (45,000 in year 1 of operation) and the majority of these being those already visiting the Island.”

However, local conservationists have long raised concerns about the impact on the island of building a new interpretive centre, and the visitors it would aim to attract.

“The original thing was enormous and would be disruptive,” says Sean Byrne, a member of Bull Island Action Group, a group of volunteers who work to keep the area clean.

North Bull Island is a special protection area for the conservation of wild bird species, and one of the 714 biosphere reserves – “learning places for sustainable development” – in UNESCO’s World Network of Biosphere Reserves. It also hosts two nature reserves.

Current footfall is already highly disruptive to local wildlife, Byrne said by phone on Wednesday.

“If it attracted more visitors than are currently coming to the island, and they all went into the dunes or onto the beach or whatever. It would certainly pose a really great risk to the wildlife,” he says.

This was among the points made by the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage’s Griffin when she raised doubts about the project in 2024.

“The proposed location of this Dublin Bay UNESCO Biosphere Discovery Centre is within protected habitats such as Marram Dunes. The construction phase elements of this project is likely to have significant impacts on the receiving environment if incorrectly designed and managed,” Griffin’s submission said.

“Moreover, it is well documented that Bull Island and the protected habitats are under severe threat from visitor movements and associated damage,” she wrote.

The chief executive responded at the time to such concerns.

“The Discovery Centre will promote responsible behaviour and stewardship within the local community. The Discovery Centre will be the hub for this one on-one engagement with locals and visitors alike,” his reply said.

“At present the absence of such a facility to inform and foster appreciation for sensitive habitats is allowing the current adverse behaviours highlighted by the Department’s submission to persist,” he added.

Smaller and smaller

While it's somewhat welcome news that plans for the new discovery centre are for one of a further “watered down” scale, Byrne and his Bull Island Action Group comrades would still rather there wasn’t a new one on the island at all, he says.

Green Party Councillor Donna Cooney says she and others would rather see the old interpretive centre on Bull Island refurbished rather than knocked – as planned – than for a new building to be erected.

But what local people really want, says Cooney, is – if there is to be a visitor centre – for it to be placed back in St Anne’s Park, rather than on Bull Island itself.

Rather than bringing more people onto the Island, which can hardly deal with its current number of visitors, a place in St Anne’s – overlooking Bull Island – would do the same job, without the negative impacts, she says.

People won't just go to the centre on Bull Island, they’ll then traipse around sensitive parts of the island, she says. “Like in terms of the salt marshes.”

“The north of the island is the area you're not supposed to walk on – people or dogs,” Cooney says. “You've got the seals up there with their pups, and you've got the ground nesting birds, things like that.”

But ultimately, she says, they’d rather nothing there at all interfering with the wildlife of the Dublin 3 nature preserve.

If they are to move ahead with constructing a new centre on the island, Cooney says she at least hopes that the tall watch tower included in previous plans is scrapped.

That is another thing that would be better suited to St Anne’s. People can view the island from the tower in the park, with binoculars, she says.

So-called “tower viewers”, are binoculars mounted on stands and are found in tourist spots around the world.

The council has not yet responded to a request to see any updated plans to the proposed new centre.

It’s not clear what concerns from locals and conservationists have been heeded, and what have not.

“The sum is about the feasibility and bringing whatever is appropriate through the planning process, but that will come out to the area committee in, you know, pre-Part 8 type of thing,” chief executive Shakespeare told Lyons at Monday’s meeting.

Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme.