What’s the best way to tell area residents about plans for a new asylum shelter nearby?
The government should tell communities directly about plans for new asylum shelters, some activists and politicians say.
The council would spend approximately €10 million to remove the waste and build a wall around the site, said Dublin City Council’s chief executive, Owen Keegan.
“The scale of the problem and the health risks involved require immediate action,” said the minutes of a meeting of government officials in June 2020.
“We’re just classed as second-class citizens, that’s what we are,” said Annette Flanagan, who lives nearby. “And this would never go on anywhere else. It wouldn’t.”
Local residents and councillors say they want more amenities and have not been consulted, which the council explains by saying it is still at an early stage.
Engineers were tasked by the council with working out what’s there. None of the pollutants they found present a significant human health risk, according to the report.
When councillors in the north of the city met earlier this week, they discussed the status of several housing projects.
Local groups and residents have different ideas for what the community in north Dublin needs: whether housing, a community centre, or a well-maintained park.
“It’s just, I don’t know. I don’t know what’s going to happen. There’s an awful thing over the place with people being sick,” says Annette Flanagan.
An EPA protocol says any illegal landfill near homes “should” be remediated in “the shortest practicable time”, and after assessing what’s in it. An FOI response suggests no assessment has been done.
Last Thursday, a big digger dipped its mechanical arm into the back of a truck, grabbed some rubble and scattered it around.
Get our latest headlines in one of them, and recommendations for things to do in Dublin in the other.