Timeline for Fingal section of Royal Canal Greenway drifts further again

The timeline for Fingal County Council’s section of the Royal Canal Greenway has been pushed back again, because of the need to revise designs.

The councillors had been told that a planning application would go in during the third quarter of 2023, said Labour Councillor John Walsh, at the October meeting of Fingal County Council.

It was later pushed back to late 2024, he said.

And now, a report on the council’s latest capital programme for 2025 to 2027 said the application would go to An Bord Pleanála in the second quarter of 2025.

“There is a significant delay there. I think that’s very disappointing given the climate crisis and the desperate need for the greenway,” said Walsh.

The council was still at “preliminary design stage”, said the capital programme report. They needed extra meetings to discuss revised designs, it said.

That’s because designs needed to line up with the National Transport Authority’s new national cycling manual, published in September 2023, it said.

That manual means the council has had to amend some of its drawings, said  Matthew McAleese, the council’s director of Planning and Strategic Infrastructure, at the meeting.

And then, the environmental impact assessment has to be updated based on that too, he said. But, said McAleese, he didn’t expect the timeline to slip any further.

Twelve years in the making

Fingal’s Royal Canal Urban Greenway is one piece of a larger project to develop a cycle route between Dublin and Galway, connecting the River Liffey in Dublin City to the Shannon in Longford.

Each section of the greenway is moving at a different speed, with Dublin City Council preparing to commence the fourth and final phase of its own work, covering 4.2km of the route between Ashtown and Phibsboro.

About 12 years ago, Fingal County Council commissioned a feasibility report carried out by consultants Atkins.

The study looked at the Royal Canal between the 10th lock in Ashtown and Confey, just east of Leixlip.

Cycling west to east, that report proposed that the route run along the south bank as far as Kennan’s Bridge on the Porterstown Road, at which point it would switch to the north bank, Walsh says. “That was changed in 2018.”

The council commissioned DBFL Consulting Engineers to carry out a new study, which shifted the greenway over to the north bank along the 8.1km length between the Kildare border and the canal’s 12th lock in Castleknock.

This slowed the project down, Walsh says. “It could’ve been started five years ago.”

At the October meeting, McAleese, the council official, said the 8km route has just about every highly sensitive designation attached to it. “From ecology, biodiversity, habitats to the actual protected structure of the canal itself.”

So a large number of surveys are needed, he said. “It’s an incredibly high bar for us to put an application into An Bord Pleanála.”

Many factors are beyond the council’s control, Walsh said on Tuesday. “There’s a lot of biodiversity. Badger setts and otter holts. Environmental surveys have to be done. That’s perfectly reasonable.”

A spokesperson for Fingal County Council said on Monday evening that its Planning and Strategic Infrastructure Department is continuing to finalise the preliminary design in consultation with its stakeholders.

As well as complying with the NTA’s new cycling design manual, it also needed to align to the approved DART+ West designs, they said.