Council officials “gagged” by management

Fingal County Council management was accused of gagging officials of its parks department at a recent meeting of the Council’s local area committee.

The accusation was made by Cllr. Margaret Richardson (FF) after councillors were informed that parts of the Tolka Valley Park would take up to 30 years to recover from work to run a sewage pipe through the Dublin 15 park.

Councillors were presented with a report by officials of the water services department following on from their recent public consultation on the proposals. However according to some councillors very few of the local objections to the €70m scheme had been addressed in the report.

In response to a question from Cllr. Ruth Coppinger (SP), Executive Parks Superintendent Hans Visser, who is also the council’s Biodiversity Officer, stated that the recovery time for sections of the park near Brookhaven and Castlecurragh where up to 100 mature trees and sections of hedgerow were to be removed, would be “up to 30 years”. In the case of the rest of the park, “the recovery time would be between 5 and 10 years,” he said.

A number of councillors expressed amazement at these figures pointing out that they had never been made aware of this during the consultation process.

However John Mulcahy the project engineer for the scheme, said that “in reality the 30 years only relates to replacing the trees, the reinstatement of the vast bulk of the ecology will take far less duration than that.” He also argued that councillors had all of their questions answered at all stages in the process.

Accusing management of gagging its parks department staff, Cllr. Richardson said “we would have liked to have heard from the parks department before this stage. It seems that what you are telling us is that if we don’t ask the right questions, we won’t get the right answers. We are stunned by what we have heard here today.

“I think the parks department has been gagged. It’s very obvious. That’s why we have got no report or input from them on this matter,” she claimed.

According to Mr. Visser “we were not involved in the development of these plans so we were not able to report.”

However this was denied by Mr. Mulcahy who said “we consulted with parks department and their comments were included in our report. This report was approved by the director of services for parks.”

Cllr. Ruth Coppinger was also adamant that the parks department had effectively been excluded from the preparation of the report. “Considering that Tolka Valley Park is a regional park, it is amazing that there is no voice for the parks department in this report. I would like to see the submission made by the parks officials as part of this consultation process,” she said.

She also claimed that a member of the Tolka River Environmental Alliance (TREA) who had sought this information under the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act “is still waiting for a reply.” A senior official of the water services department denied that any FOI request had been received by the council.

Local groups have also been horrified at some of the information that has emerged from the council meeting. According to Philip Jennings, secretary of TREA, “we are about to lose 30 years of growth and ecological development in the park. We have recently seen kingfishers and dippers coming back into the park. These are going to be lost to the area again.

“We have also introduced hundred of young children and teenagers to the park and to the sport of angling. We cannot in all conscience bring these children onto what will be a building site for the next two years, so what are they going to do in the meantime?”

Speaking to Community Voice, Monica Shannon of the Dublin 15 Environment Group said “the Natura report which the council itself commissioned for this project says that there is no guarantee that, even after 30 years, the park will ever recover from this work. We need every local resident to contact their local councillors and make their feelings known on this issue,” she said.

Local groups opposed to the work taking place in the park are organising a Tolka Valley Park awareness evening on Thursday 10th April. Local residents and councillors are being invited to meet at 7 p.m. in the car-park of the Brookhaven entrance to park. They will be given an opportunity to see what the park has to offer and how the pipe works might impact on the amenity and ecology of the area.

 

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