A High Court judge urged consultation to address concerns about pedestrianisation of a street in Malahide, Co Dublin, when he dismissed a challenge to the scheme.
Mr Justice Richard Humphreys said consultations between residents and the local council about the pedestrianisation of New Street “might take the edge off any perceived knock-on effect” for residents in adjoining areas.
One of the impacts would be on the number of car-parking spaces, he said.
He said that was “the ever-present reality of trade-offs again, a perpetual disappointment to those whose imaginative bandwidth doesn’t stretch beyond simplistic solutions”.
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He made the comments when he dismissed a challenge Nicola Byrne, who lives on Old Street, Malahide, to Fingal County Council’s decision to permanently pedestrianise New Street, which she claimed would have knock-on effects for residents in adjoining streets such as where she lives.
This was the second case she brought, the first having been in 2021 when she was refused an injunction stopping the temporary pedestrianisation.
Last year, she challenged the permanent pedestrianisation. The council opposed her challenge.
In a judgment on Friday, Mr Justice Humphreys rejected most grounds of the challenge including one seeking an order to quash the plan.
However, he granted Ms Byrne a declaration that the council, from June 2020, had failed and is continuing to fail with provisions of the Planning and Development Act by failing to adopt a local area plan for Malahide.
Before concluding his judgment, the judge asked “if there was any room” for the council to consider further consultations with the Old Street residents or their elected members to see if any other road-design, traffic-management, calming or parking measures or other steps could be considered to improve things for the residents.
This could be done “in a way that might take the edge off any perceived knock-on effects of the New Street changes”, he said.
Ms Byrne had made some “totally doable” suggestions in this regard which were common practice in places such as the Netherlands “but then one can give Dutch examples for most good urban design”, land use and probably a lot of other things, he said.
The “trade off” approach to mitigate impacts on Old Street residents from “revelry on the pedestrianised New Street shouldn’t be completely impossible at least to some extent”, he said.
“Some form of planning gain for Old Street might go a little way towards assuaging some of the by no means wholly unreasonable concerns articulated by the applicant [Ms Byrne] if the pedestrianisation of New Street does go ahead as proposed,” he said.
