Council set to brush off plan for new tearoom in Bushy Park, chief executive says

It seemed like half of Terenure was out in Bushy Park, either playing or watching the many games underway on Sunday evening.

Kids swung rackets, on most of the nine tennis and four padel courts. They played basketball on the stoney half-court nearby. 

And on six of the eight GAA and football pitches, there was either a training session, a match, or a few strays knocking sliotars around with hurls.

At the south-west end of the park – which covers roughly 44 hectares, according to Dublin City Council’s website – the playground was filled with excited young children, devouring ice cream and cones bought by parents from a van parked some 50 metres away.

The playground stands at the top of a slope overlooking the duck pond and a green bandstand, where some teenagers sat, chatting and laughing loudly.

Nine years ago, the council was getting ready to build a new tearoom on this small hill too, said Caroline Kennedy of I Love Terenure, a local community organisation. “It was quite spectacular.”

While approved by councillors in 2017, the project stalled in 2024 due to a lack of funding, according to a council quality assurance report from May 2025.

Now, the council is planning to revisit the designs that were green-lit, the council’s Chief Executive Richard Shakespeare said on 9 February. 

“With a view to bringing that project into the capital programme,” he said, referring to the council’s multi-annual budget for big, once-off projects – like building a tearoom.

It is an exciting prospect that the Bushy Park tearoom could be in the pipeline once again Kennedy said on Monday. “I have constantly been asking our community officer for the last three years.”

A council spokesperson on Monday declined to comment on whether the council intends to follow through with the now decade-old designs that they approved, or would update the plans.

A very long tea break

The Bushy Park tearoom was first floated as an idea at a community meeting around 12 years ago, said Kennedy. 

“We had like three hundred people in a local hall, and just wanted a King Arthur at the Round Table scenario where everyone’s voice was equal,” she said.

Numerous projects emerged from that gathering, including the farmer’s market in the park, she said. “About 50 came out of it, and obviously tearoom was one of them.”

Council officials notified the South-East Area Committee in October 2016 that they would initiate a Part 8 planning application for the construction of the tea room, while also upgrading the band stand and doing some landscaping works.

Those proposed designs showed a one-storey cafe, perched atop the slope with a balcony facing out onto the redesigned bandstand, itself equipped with a new roof, steel gates to create a backstage area and a concrete access ramp.

According to the report, presented to the area committee, only six submissions were received during the consultation process, with those raising concerns with traffic, parking and the “impact on amenity space”.

These plans progressed unbeknownst to a lot of locals, Kennedy says. “It was very under the radar.”

It was news that any of this had proceeded past the design stage, said Fionnuala Blake, the Terenure Residents Association’s chairperson on Tuesday. “We were shown this amazing restaurant and tea room, and what it wasn’t going to have, it would be the envy of the world.”

But she hadn’t heard a single word since then, she said.

The toilet and tearoom were granted permission by the council in 2017, according to Shakespeare, the council’s CEO, in a report last month.

Construction work on both the tearoom and public toilet was slated by the council to be finished in 2022, Leslie Moore, the head of the council’s Park Services, had told the South East Area Committee in May 2021.

But, four years later, the council had placed the project on hold until they could identify funding streams, according to the council quality assurance report published in May 2025.

By then the council had already spent €616,075 on the tearoom and its ancillary facilities, the report says, noting that they were projected to spend a total of €1.9 million by the time it was finished.

After sitting dormant since then, its status was queried by Fine Gael Councillor Patrick Kinsella at the council’s full monthly council meeting on 9 February.

Kinsella asked if there was any update on the tea room, and if it was possible to incorporate into the design any autism-friendly elements?

The council does intend to re-visit the Part 8 plan for it at the end of the year, Shakespeare said. “This will include a ‘changing places’ facility.”

Funding for their development would come from development levies, he said.

Park Services would also liaise with the local organisations Autism Friendly Terenure and Age Friendly Terenure on any proposals, he said.

When asked on Monday if the council would be changing any elements of the approved designs, a spokesperson for the council responded saying they had no comment “as this project is not currently being progressed”.

Some tearooms are more open than others

Currently, Dublin City Council has 10 tearooms or cafes in its public parks where toilets are also available, Shakespeare said in his report to the full council back in February.

The most recent of these tea rooms to be built is located in Palmerston Park, and it started to serve this past December, according to a social media post by Fine Gael TD James Geoghegan on 13 December.

Geoghegan also declared them open via his Facebook page on 21 November 2024 for Palmerston Park, back when he was a councillor, and Lord Mayor.

Later that same month, he was elevated to the Dáil in the general elections. Eight months later, the council agreed to grant a 10-year lease for the building to Coffee Crowd Limited on 7 July.

Although the council’s Park Strategy for 2022 to 2027 says that tearooms are under consideration for Mountjoy Square Park and Blessington Street Basin, there are two more that are due to arrive sooner.

Construction work is currently in progress by Bracegrade Limited on the delayed tearoom and toilet in Merrion Square, with its completion now slated for July, Shakespeare said in a report to independent Councillor Mannix Flynn at the full council meeting in February.

That project, which commenced in 2015, was found to be not in compliance with council, national and EU procurement regulations after the cost of consultant architects rose from €246,000 to €655,000, or 166 percent on the original contract, according to an audit report by the Local Government Audit Service, published in November 2025.

Meanwhile, a similarly delayed tearoom and toilet in Sean Moore Park was previously scheduled for completion by the council during the second quarter of 2024. 

It hasn’t been built yet though, and there still isn’t a revised timeline for its completion. 

Shakespeare, in February, attributed the delay to Uisce Eireann, which he said is currently in the process of applying for a wayleave from the council to service the Glass Bottle site nearby – where more than 3,800 homes are to be delivered, according to the Ronan Group website.

That wayleave will traverse the park in the vicinity of the proposed tearooms, he said. “There have been a number of changes to the entry point into the Glass Bottle site which have resulted in changes that have delayed this process.”

A spokesperson for Uisce Eireann said on Tuesday that they are engaging with the council to progress the acquisition of the wayleaves required to service the Glass Bottle site within the Poolbeg Strategic Development Zone.