Councillors vote to close laneway off Glasnevin Avenue due to anti-social behaviour

On Monday evening, the laneway that runs from Glasnevin Avenue to Beneavin Park is pristine and empty.

Some local residents petitioned the council to close the lane earlier this year. Following a consultation process, local councillors at a recent meeting backed the proposal.

However, other residents say the lane is an important route for them to get from Beneavin Park to shops and public transport stops.

“That laneway is used a lot and it will be used way more once Bus Connects comes in,” says Cathy Fitzpatrick, a resident of Beneavin Park who objected to the closure.

At a meeting on 17 September, councillors on the North West Area Committee agreed to the plan to extinguish the public right of way that runs between 233 to 235 Glasnevin Avenue, and then south about 50m to Beneavin Park.

Councillors who backed closing the lane said it’s a safety issue for the people who live beside it.

“There are issues with anti-social behaviour, loitering, hanging around,” says Fianna Fáil Councillor Keith Connolly.

People Before Profit Councillor Conor Reddy says the council should look at other ways to address the anti-social behaviour and try to stick to its policy, which is to increase walkability in the city.

“The deeper problem for me is that DCC, again and again, the response to anti-social behaviour is to wall things off,” says Reddy. “Restrict services, restrict access, instead of dealing with the root cause.”

The closure of the lane came about following a petition from residents, complaining about anti-social activity in the laneway.

Its allegations included nightly drug dealing, verbal abuse, harassment, defecation and rubbish being set on fire.

There was illegal dumping in the lane, says Connolly, the Fianna Fáil councillor, and last October material – which was being collected for bonfires – was set alight.

Fitzpatrick, the local resident, agrees there was a fire there last October. She says that bins in a number of locations were also set alight.

In general though, she says it’s a quiet area. She walks through the laneway regularly, she says. “We walk through it at night and find it grand,” she says.

Some local teeangers do congregate there, she says, but she talks to them and says they are fine.

Fitzpatrick says that if there was constant drug dealing there should be a lot more complaints logged by the Gardaí.

Garda records show five complaints recorded on the laneway in the last four years, according to the council report.

Connolly, the councillor, says he thinks some local residents were calling the local Garda station rather than dialling 999 and so those calls were not logged.

A spokesperson for Dublin City Council said: “Local residents have expressed serious concerns for safety due to the blind spot in the laneway and numerous other instances unreported.”

Social Democrats Councillor Mary Callaghan says local councillors have to weigh up local residents’ differing points of view.

“We had conflicting requests, some people living close to it didn’t want it open due to anti-social behaviour,” says Callaghan, while other people had valid reasons for wanting it kept open, as closing it places them further away from transport routes.

“In the end my decision was the priority would need to be the people next to the lane, if it was making life miserable for them on a regular basis,” she says.

The consultation

Connolly, the Fianna Fáil councillor, says the process to extinguish a right of way only requires the council to put up a notice stating its intention to close the route and then people can respond.

In this case, the council carried out a door-to-door survey of the area, he says.

At the meeting of the North West Area Committee on 17 September, council officials presented a report on the proposal to close the laneway, which said the council had surveyed 117 households on Glasnevin Avenue and Beneavin Park.

“Each resident was visited twice at different times,” the report says. It also says “A number of households advised of neighbours away on summer holidays.”

Of those surveyed, 51 percent of residents didn’t answer, because, for example, they weren’t home, or they declined to take part in the survey.

Another 28 percent were in favour of closing the lane, 15 percent were against, and 6 percent “advised it was not applicable to them because they didn’t use the laneway”, says the report.

Connolly, the Fianna Fáil councillor, said the survey showed that as you got further away from the laneway people were more likely to be against the closure.

Reddy, the People Before Profit councillor, says that since the area committee meeting he has been contacted by a number of residents who are opposing the closure and who say that council staff didn’t knock on their door.

Fitzpatrick says she doesn’t think the council surveyed all the houses in Beneavin Park, as neighbours reported to her that they were at home but didn’t receive a call. “I know they didn’t get to everybody,” she says.

She requested an oral hearing to make the council aware of her concerns about the closure, which was set up. She was restricted to bringing two neighbours with her, she says.

The council should survey the nursing home staff and parents from the local school, many of whom use the laneway as a through route, she says.

Fitzpatrick says some people won’t realise how inconvenient it is until the bus routes change, because the number 9 bus that currently comes into Beneavin Park won’t be running once Bus Connects is fully operational.

But Connolly, the Fianna Fáil councillor, said the difference would only be a short walk.

“Some people do use that laneway to walk to the bus, they’ll have an extra five minutes walk now,” Connolly says. “But the people who were living on the lane, they were in favour of closure.”

At the 17 September meeting, the local area councilors agreed to recommend the closure of the laneway, which will go before the full council for a decision at an upcoming monthly meeting.

A last resort?

“Closure of laneways in the city are only considered as a last resort,” says a council spokesperson.

Dublin City Council has recently moved to close routes at Swan Alley, Harbour Court, Hardwicke Street, Ormond Place, and St Catherine’s Lane.

Reddy, the People Before Profit Councillor, says the council needs to do more to explore other options before closing off access routes.

“Constantly we hear permeability of the city being talked about, the importance of having these connections between neighbourhoods, it’s on our own strategy for the development of the city,” he says. “It’s in total contravention to that that you close something off.”

The council spokesperson says the council explored all the options before deciding to close the lane.

“CCTV / Improved lighting / increased community policing / community engagement and development and alternative routes were all considered to address anti-social behaviour,” says the council spokesperson by email.

Reddy says he asked about CCTV and council officials said it wouldn’t be possible because of privacy issues, he said.

CCTV is great in theory, says Callaghan, the Social Democrats councillor, but in reality, it is costly to maintain and rarely watched. If it is managed by the council, the Gardaí have to go through an onerous bureaucratic process to access it, she says.

Anti-social behaviour is a policing issue, says Connolly, the Fianna Fáil councillor, but Gardaí can’t be at that laneway all the time and installing CCTV is complex and expensive.

“If you were designing a space tomorrow morning you wouldn’t design them this way,” he says “It is so secluded.”

Says Callaghan: “These laneways were built at a different time when we didn’t have the same challenges we have today.”

Reddy says he will vote against the closure at the upcoming council meeting. “There are much better ways to deal with anti-social behaviour, if it is there, than by closing places off,” he says. “It just displaces the problem elsewhere.”