1 March 2001 Edition

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Planning the destruction of Finglas village

Developers want to tear down Finglas village on Dublin city's northside and replace it with a high rise complex of businesses and apartments. Local Sinn Féin councillor Dessie Ellis is furious at the lack of consultation with the community and questions the motives of the developers. ROISIN DE ROSA investigates.


``As fast as we try to bring down the high rises in Ballymun, the developers are coming in to put them up again, right on top of us, in Finglas village,'' said an ouutraged Dessie Ellis. The Sinn Féin councillor was just back from a meeting of Dublin City Council's Area Committee, where developers' plans for the ``urban development'' of Finglas were up for discussion. The Cunningham Group, in consortium with Murphy-Chatham, have proposed a half-billion pound plan to ``develop'' the 11-acre site on which the village stands.

``These developers are looking to do away at one blow with the whole village, and replace it with an at least eight-storey high commercial development of shopping malls with apartments above,'' said Ellis. ``This has been our village down the centuries, and now, without so much as a `by your leave' from councillors, peoples' groups or community organisations, these developers somehow have got leave to propose a plan costing around a half billion pounds to ``develop'' the 11-acre site on which the now village stands.''

``I asked Cunningham's at the meeting about provision for social housing in the scheme of apartments, which are expected to number between 600 and 1,200, and which are anticipated to have a retail value of over £120,000 each. The answer amounted to nothing. Neither affordable nor social housing has any place in their plans.''

Brendan O'Carroll is secretary of the Finglas Residents' Coalition. ``We have a lot of questions about how this plan ever got off the ground,'' he said. ``What role has the City Council in these development plans? The Cunningham Group's plans have taken for granted the cooperation of the council, which owns three car parks on the site proposed for the development.''

O'Carroll pointed out that Cunningham's need to have undertakings that they will have possession of the entire site prior to applying for planning permission. He wants to know what is the status of the local authority-owned land.

He also pointed to rumours that the Department of Justice has struck a deal to sell Finglas Garda station to the developers on the promise of a brand new Garda Station, projected in the plans, upon which they may be allowed to pay rent to Cunningham's. ``It would seem that Cunningham's have become the new Dublin Council'', said O'Carroll. ``When you think about the whole development plan, for which Cunningham's are about to apply for planning permission, it puts Quarryvale in the ha'penny place.'' (Quarryvale is the huge shopping development in Clondalkin over which the Flood Tribunal has been so exercised.)

Finglas, as Cunningham's glossy brochure points out, is a historic village and the social hub of a large community of 22,000 people, with a wider catchment area of some 75,000 people.

The sugar on the pill of Cunningham plans is a swimming pool, a gym, a public arts centre, including a theatre and exhibition and workshop space. ``Of course there are many developments we would like, as a community, to see implemented in the village,'' said Dessie Ellis. ``A community arts centre and a facility for community groups would most certainly be amongst them. But does that mean we have to tear down the whole village?

``There are people coming to me every day of the week, desperately looking for affordable housing for their families who have grown up and want to move into houses of their own. Are these flats to be for them? Or is the development only commercially viable if the apartments are for the `nouveau riche' of Dublin city, who can afford exorbitant prices for a flat near town?''

``We are just in the process of developing Mellowes Park just down the road, with a swimming pool, creche facilities, two all-weather outdoor football pitches and a playground for the kids, at a cost of £8.5 million. So who will use the developer's swimming pool and gym, unless it is for the apartment dwellers as distinct from the Finglas people. It looks to me like social apartheid, a long way from the social mix envisaged by the planners in Ballymun and established in law last year by the Supreme Court, which ruled constitutional the 20% social housing requirement of the Planning Bill.''

Dessie Ellis believes the development is designed to take advantage of the so-called `Living over the Shop Scheme' tax allowances. This scheme, currently being revamped and finalised by Dublin, Cork and Galway local authorities, allows investors to write off all rebuilding and refurbishment costs against rental income. Owner-occupiers are allowed to write off these costs over all income, from all sources. ``Quite an attractive little proposition for a large developer. It makes the cost of the project tax free.''

Cunningham's glossy brochure grandly claims: ``Today, Finglas stands on the cusp of a new dawn, in tune with our new millennium. Presently there is only one person living in the heart of the village, of a site which has a catchment area of 75,000 consumers.'' The brochure goes on to claim that ``Historic Finglas'', which Cunningham's intend to wipe off the map, ``founded as it was on St. Canice's Celtic Abbey, was the centre for setting standards for religious practice in Ireland''.

It may yet provide the standard for the new religion of consumerism, not to mention a new dawn of tax breaks for developers.


An Phoblacht
44 Parnell Sq.
Dublin 1
Ireland