Fingal councillors criticise planning officials for failing to make developer provide universal, reliable access to Clongriffin Dart station

“I think this is entirely unsatisfactory,” said Green Party Councillor David Healy at a council meeting on 2 October.

In his view, how Fingal County Council has handled the long-running lack of universal and reliable access for residents to Clongriffin Dart Station was worthy of a complaint to the Office of the Ombudsman, he said.

Councillors can’t file complaints that way but someone should, he said.

Healy had asked for an update on any planning enforcement action taken by the council against the private developer, a company linked to Richmond Homes, who owns the structure that leads to the station.

There’s no station or platform on the eastern, Baldoyle side of the train tracks. Instead, there’s a rectangular steel tower with an elevator and stairs inside.

These lead up to the station’s entrance, which is located on a bridge above the tracks and platforms. While it was supposed to be temporary, this strange access tower has been in place for more than a dozen years now.

Residents in Baldoyle rely on the tower to get to the station. But the lift has been intermittently out of order and the station is shuttered overnight.

At the meeting, Healy cited two planning conditions that he suggested have been breached, and are the subject of a planning complaint.

Fearghal McSweeney, an administrative officer in the council’s planning department, said they are taking any potential planning breaches seriously. “It’s not something we’re taking lightly.”

But he couldn’t go into any detail about it while the case file was open, he said. Also, it’s important to say that these are alleged breaches until any finding says different, says McSweeney.

Richmond Homes didn’t respond to queries sent Tuesday about whether it considers itself in breach of planning conditions.

But documents released to Healy lay out its position in June, including that a planning condition prescribing access to the station “at all times” doesn’t literally mean “at all times”.

Still going on

For years, local residents in Baldoyle have complained about poor maintenance and patchy access to a tower that they rely on to get to the Clongriffin Dart Station.

On and off the lift – particularly important for those with buggies, or disabilities – doesn’t work, said Healy, the Green Party councillor.

For about a year, a security company has locked the access structure at night, he said.

That complicates night-time access to a 24-hour bus route, Healy said. And also, the company doesn’t always open the access structure up again in the morning.

At the meeting of the council’s Howth Malahide Area Committee, Social Democrats Councillor Joan Hopkins said she couldn’t be the only one who has gotten early-morning calls that it was locked.

Healy pressed council officials on what they are doing, and at what speed.

There are two planning conditions that he had flagged with the council that he thinks the current owner is breaching, he says. He read out numbers 17 and 18 relating to a planning permission for the site.

Number 17 says that the development of the lands should be phased in line with the planning application and the phasing plan agreed with the council before any works.

Number 18 says that the developer needs to submit a construction management plan to the council, which includes “maintenance of access to Clongriffin Dart Station at all times”.

Healy said that a proposal for phasing had been submitted in December 2019 but was rejected as it didn’t match the phasing laid out in a local area plan. The local area plan says that before 90 homes are done in that area, work needs to start on the village centre and the link to the Clongriffin Station.

Construction on homes started, he said at the meeting, “and enforcement action wasn’t taken”.

Healy also wants to know what the planning department thinks the requirement for access at all times, in condition 18, refers to, he said. Has that been discussed? he asked.

McSweeney, the council official, said that a warning letter had been issued by the council in May and investigations are ongoing.

Fingal County Council’s planning database now lists a submission for compliance with the phasing, but none of the documents are online. “The documents don’t go live until the decision is made,” said a council spokesperson.

Planning documents released to Healy under Access to Environmental Information Regulations do show an anonymised response on 24 June from the developer to the council’s warning letter in May.

The response doesn’t directly address the council’s refusal of its application to approve its phasing. But it says that the developer has done everything in line with the planning permissions, and built 117 homes on part of the lands so far in its “phase one”.

Also, there is public access to the train station at all times when the trains are running which is a “security-minded response”, it says. “To insist on public access ‘at all times’ would be to misinterpret the intent of the condition.”

The response does mention how, since it built those first homes, it got permission from An Bord Pleanála to amend its planning application for other lands in September 2021, and that new planning permission “has not yet commenced”.

Healy said that if you “avail of” a planning permission – by issuing a notice to say you’ve started to build it out – then you have to built it in its entirety, or as amended.

The amended planning permission that was granted also includes a condition that the phasing be agreed with the council. “One would expect that the council would require the station access and plaza with shops/amenities in the first phase,” he said.

It also includes a condition setting “the maintenance of access to Clongriffin Railway Station at all times” during construction.

But, in any case, until that application is commenced it has no legal force, he says, “and doesn’t entitle them to do anything nor not avoid the obligations of their existing permission.”

Healy said he doesn’t understand why there has been no decision on the planning complaint yet. It had been five months since the warning letter, he said, and the developer has responded.

“We have a legal objective to take a decision within 12 weeks,” he said, at the area committee meeting.

McSweeney said there can be times when investigations take longer.

“The whole situation is just beyond belief,” said Fine Gael Councillor Aoibhinn Tormey. Councillors were told for ages by planning enforcement that there was nothing to be done and now it seems that there were things that could have been done, she said.

McSweeney defended his department. They got one planning complaint last year, looked into it, and the case was closed as that didn’t concern a breach, he said.

When they got more complaints, they opened a file again, he said.

Later, Healy said that last year’s complaint was raised when signs were put up with opening hours for the station access. The planning department looked at whether the physical signs themselves were in breach, rather than any fuller consideration of the opening hours or access, he said.

He had to point out the two planning conditions that he thinks are relevant for the planners to look at those, he said.

Past promises

While the planning dispute rumbles on, councillors have also been pressing the National Transport Authority (NTA) for a longer-term solution to the station access.

In a letter to councillors on the Howth-Malahide Area Committee, Richard Kelly, a liaison for the NTA said that it, the council, and Richmond Homes had agreed that the best short-term way forward was to put in a new modern lift.

It was reviewing design documents ahead of putting the scheme out to tender, the letter said.

Hopkins, the Social Democrats councillor, said that wasn’t the timeline they had been told earlier. “We were told remediation works would be taken before September.”

Healy said that the NTA has committed to taking over the tower, although the terms of any arrangement between it and Richmond Homes is unclear.

Hopkins says the taxpayer is being left to pick up the bill for everything. “What are Richmond Homes being made to do? They’ve gone off the pitch completely.”

“There’s something not working here,” said Hopkins to council officials at the meeting on 2 October. “It’s totally unacceptable. Can you see that it’s unacceptable?”

A spokesperson for the NTA hasn’t yet addressed queries sent on Tuesday as to what has delayed its work, and who is to pay for it.