the PDF contains the April 17th proposal to councillors of the local area committee from Niall D Brennan & Associates.

today at about 4pm in Baldoyle the Coast Guard helicopter was circling the racecourse lands and building site. all 5 of us were in the garden looking up at it, we were not as close to it since the day we saw an aborted display in Killkee Harbour Co. Clare. But not as close as me old mate richie wilson who snapped a super series of photos recently when there was a fallen walker up on the hill of Howth.

if he never posts another blog post he’ll have better photos than I’ll ever have! nice one Richie. [image size html squashed - view image in new tab to see full size.]  See the martello above the men below the helicopter and the harbour beyond that.

PUBLIC MEETING MAY 27th 8pm mid sutton community centre

Back in 2003/4 the Socialist Party along with the residents of Sutton Park / Parkvale & Meadowbrook successfully reversed the Council’s attempts to rezone the lands known as Brickfields at the southern end of Seagrange Park for residential development.

However as we warned in our Newsletter earlier this year the developer is continuing to try and get development on this site currently designated as open space. This time under the guise of the government’s Affordable Housing Initiative.

Twice last year local councillors were briefed on proposals that included a development of over 165 apartments in 3 to 6 storey blocks, accessing through Parkvale and Meadowbrook. Yet at no stage did they bring this information to residents in the area!

In January they raised a few concerns about the development and asked that it would be revised. However as we warned, the revised plans were hardly different at all, with precious little changes made other than proposals that would supposedly deal with the flooding problem. The height and access and number of units remained unchanged. AND YET the councillors have asked the Affordable Housing Initiative to pursue the issue further.

This has gone on long enough. It is time that residents let the local councillors know that we will not stand for development on this open space. The Socialist Party locally & our councillors on Fingal County Council believe that the open space should be enhanced to allow full recreational use of the amenity.

To this end we have set up a public meeting for Tuesday May 27th 8pm in the community center in Bayside. Community Action can protect our open spaces. Please come along on the night and find out what’s going on before it’s too late.

Brian Greene – Socialist Party Representative Dublin North East.

BREAKING NEWS: Plans to redevelop Bayside Shopping Centre which was given planning permission by Fingal County Council has been overturned on appeal with An Bord Pleanala. Perhaps now would be a good time to insist that the presentation of the existing shopping area and the surface of the car park be properly maintained and not be left if a run down state. The old trick of letting developments run down to ware down the community will not work. Enforcement of such is a matter for Fingal County Council.

thanks bertie ahern & Fianna Fail.

“those buckets will come in handy for a whip around”

yesterday local councillors Cllr Healy Maher & Cosgrave supported the material contravention that gave way to development on the Edros site.

photo taken in march 2003 at a previous rezoning attempt at the site.

in November in the Irish Times cllr Healy having objected to the planning application said the following

Watch this Space

Opposition to apartments on amenity-zoned site in Howth

A proposal to grant planning permission for apartments on Howth’s largest amenity-zoned site would be a massive blow to the community, says Green Party Cllr David Healy.

Pierse Contracting is looking to build 64 apartments and a café in five blocks on the Edros site beside the Martello Tower in Howth, which was a community sports amenity until eight years ago.

Healy says the development would have a major visual impact on historical and amenity routes and locations in Howth, including views from Abbey Street, St Mary’s Abbey, Tower Hill, Balscadden Road, Ted Hayden’s field and East Pier, and would be out of keeping with the historic character of this important heritage area. Fingal County Council is proposing to use a material contravention procedure to allow a breach of the development plan which would require a three-quarters majority of the councillors to support it.

“There have been suggestions that the developer give money towards the development of amenities elsewhere in Howth. However, in the absence of concrete plans for such facilities, such as planning permission and capital funding arrangements, money itself carries no guarantee of results,” says Healy.

has planning permission and capital funding arrangements been granted? NO.

Howth needs a community centre. The new proposed site is 0.8 miles from the village, welcome as it is to the community it has not got the access that the open space site at edros had. I wish the groups that are working hard to site a new community centre in Howth every success in the future. It is a great pity the best amenity site in Howth will not be part of their plans. Edros site was gifted to the people of Howth but yesterday it was gifted to the developer to make tens of millions more now that the dev plan has been materially contravened and the site (he owns) is no longer to be used for open space / amenity.

€3.50 per child water tax

bin the bill

Tens of thousands of litres of water leak from the mains water to the ground water every day. Children sit in drafty prefab rooms in need of repair, FF/GP/PD govt give nowhere near the cap grant they promised in May ‘07 and class sizes promised to INTO in April have not happened.  What does the government do in kind, tells schools they have to pay local authority water bills. I am sick of funding a broken service from outside the system (fees! Cake Sales etc). Not content to sit on the side lines and moan I joined my childrens (x3 one school)  school board of management and started a 4 year term in December ‘07. I aim not to be quite about it. These bills have to go and the government may follow them into the bin.

Indo says

The Government faces a major new storm after it imposed a €3.50 water levy on thousands of primary pupils.

And in quietly slipping out the latest ’stealth tax’ announcement last night, it immediately triggered widespread anger among parents and teachers.

BreakingNews.ie reports today

Schools simply do not have the money to pay the planned water bills, according to primary school principals.

The Irish Primary Principals Network has protested that the new flat-rate water-charges being introduced by the Government are unfair.

Under the plan schools will have to pay €3.50 per pupil for water services this year and €4 in 2009.

A metered system will then be introduced and schools will have to pay the full cost for water use.

The Government claims it is a necessary part of the EU legislation and Minister Mary Hanafin says our schools have to meet EU water conservation levels.

dónal writes over on workers play time

Why do banks still chain down the pens to the table, the banks make billions of euros by taking in our wages and charging us to take the money back out of a hole in the wall. Could they not just give us free pens like in Argos or the Bookies,

not for the first time dónal is a few weeks ahead of me on a blog topic. I saw such chains in the EBS and thought the same. Never got round to posting it. Sometimes I think I read his blog as I sleep surf. But he writes so infrequent this is not possible.

Miss-Quotation-Marx

“The Banks have nothing to lose but their chains” and our money at the casino stock exchange

I heard David McWilliams steal Joe Higgins clothes and lines on Morning Ireland this morning MP3 [time code 37:45 - 39-04] “a financial coup .. (by) a cabal of property owners in cahoots with the government. ” I was there the night Joe Higgins debated McWilliams but I didn’t think we had such an effect on the guy. BTW  750+ downloads of the debate on MP3. my god who needs RSS, when an audio blog will do. 750 wow thats more than twice the 350 that stuffed into the packed Teachers Club in Oct 2006.

A field full of bricks? who knows, the council never checked, when i was growing up in the area it was a marsh, a swamp and an illegal dump. For all we know the dumping could be asbestos dumping like what happened down the road on the N32.

Now it remains zoned amenity land thanks to the efforts of the local community, residents associations & community sports groups and the socialist party locally who saved it from rezoning in the county development plan 2005 – 2011. Plans are underway to rezone it again by means of a variation to the dev plan.

please forgive the photo quality but all i had was a 1.2mp camera and the surveyors with staff were on site a few weeks back. I have recorded a piece for radio about this site. Its due to broadcast December 3rd but you can hear it now below.

While not fully explored here there are other issues regarding the glut of housing stock in the County, the amount of already rezoned land that will take this development and the amount of mixed type infill that has already happened in the Baldoyle area.

audio recorded for future use on enviro on Near 90 FM

“You only pay for what you throw away”

Swords based Socialist Party Councillor Clare Daly Chairperson of the Fingal Anti-Bin Tax Campaign has slammed the proposed introduction of a new flat charge for environmental services, linked to the extension of the green and brown bin service.

* FINGAL ANTI-BIN TAX CAMPAIGN WILL VIGOROUSLY OPPOSE THIS DOUBLE TAX

Councillor Daly said, “After six years of propaganda from Fingal County Council to establish the tag system for the collection of the grey bin, they have now dropped the sham environmental cover and moved to charging directly for recycling facilities also.

All of the statements from Council management and the pro-bin tax councillors when the charge was originally brought in, that it wouldn’t rise, that it had nothing to do with generating extra taxation but was about encouraging people to recycle, have now been exposed for what they were – TOTAL AND UTTER BLATANT FALSEHOODS.”

She continued, “The Fingal Anti-Bin Tax Campaign has been absolutely vindicated in the stand that we took opposing that charge. Not only has the charge increased massively every year, but now the Council’s own catch-phrase has been shown up as a con. Residents will remember the Council’s slogan “You only pay for what you throw away”, and all the nonsense that if people recycled the charge would be negligible. The new proposals would mean an average household based on leaving out the grey bin fortnightly, as having paying a bin tax of €300 per annum. This is an absolute disgrace.”

Councillor Daly said, “The bin tax has always been about generating extra revenue for the Council against the backdrop of falling percentages of government support. Tens of thousands of new taxpayers have moved into Fingal County Council over the past 5-10 years, yet the amount of funding from central government equates to only 13%.

The introduction of a bin tax has made waste big business the private operators are earning millions from the present situation while PAYE taxpayers and pensioners are levied on the double. Meanwhile, while recycling has increased, the actual amount of waste per person has also increased during the lifetime of the charge.”

She concluded, “This debacle will only be halted through the elimination of a direct charge and the reinstatement of waste collection as a public service. We will vigorously oppose the introduction of this new tax by every means possible, starting at the Council Estimates meeting next Tuesday.