www.communityvoice.ie - Community stories from Dublin 15

Mountview Centre stalled again
by Peter Goulding

The long-running saga of the building of the Mountview Community Centre appears to have hit yet another hitch. With actual work due to start at the beginning of January, the escalation of a legal dispute over the rights to the land has meant that, yet again, work has been postponed.

At the centre of the controversy is the ownership of the land to the south of the Mountview Shopping Centre. The council has claimed categorically that the title of the lands rests solely with them, having been transferred by Dublin Corporation many years ago, but a local developer has claimed rights over the land, saying that he has maintained it over a number of years.

“This is very frustrating for everybody concerned,” said Fingal County Council’s Community Officer Pat Queenan. “The council is eager to get this centre up and running as soon as possible. We have all the pieces of the jigsaw in place, the money, the plans and the architects, and we would dearly love to see all the trojan work that has been done by the council and the community come to fruition.

“However we are being frustrated by a local developer who has an ongoing dispute over the ownership of the land in question. Our property services department is of course trying to sort the matter but we would like to assure the community that this is not a case of the Council dragging its heels.

“We want the centre built as much as the community but unfortunately circumstances beyond our control have held things up.”

This is not a view entirely shared by Margaret McLoughlin, Project Leader of the Mountview Resource Centre and community centre committee member.

“The committee is appalled that the work has been held up yet again,” she told Community Voice. “Virtually every other locality in the area has their own community centre but once again everything here is at a standstill. The committee cannot understand how a situation has been allowed to develop whereby one man can be allowed to stand in the way of the hopes and aspirations of a whole community.

“This situation has been ongoing for a number of years now and we can’t fathom how the Council has not put this matter to bed once and for all a long time ago. Surely they have a piece of paper to say the land is rightfully theirs?

“We even modified our plans to just go ahead with Phase 1 of the development, while the other matter was being sorted out, but now it appears that the developer has objected to the whole programme. In the meantime we have senior citizens with no place to meet, and clubs and associations for the youth of the area that cannot be set up because of the lack of a premise!

“On top of all that, we feel the lack of communication between the council and the committee has contributed to the frustration felt by the community here. The only correspondence we have had recently has been a letter on the 14th January to explain that the building was not going ahead as planned.”

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