Group complains about plans to demolish Ballymun towers

An environmental monitoring group, Friends of the Irish Environment (FIE), has lodged a formal complaint against Dublin Corporation with the European Commission over corporation plans to demolish the Ballymun Towers complex and replace it with conventional housing.

In response, the Dublin City Manager, Mr John Fitzgerald, told The Irish Times he believed the balance between objectors' rights and the "greater good served by major public projects" was "a little bit skewed".

In a landmark decision Dublin Corporation decided last year to demolish the flats complex - an area of severe social deprivation - which was built in the 1960s. The corporation decided that the high-rise nature of the complex had contributed to social decay and it proposes to replace the complex with community-centred housing.

However, FIE says it is exasperated that Dublin Corporation granted permission for what is to be a major project without first preparing an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA).

While FIE does not take issue with the principle of replacing Ballymun towers it says that "again and again Dublin Corporation is authorising the destruction of buildings that have enormous impact on the way we live, without proper public consultation and a full analysis of the impact of even massive proposals".

The group argues that by splitting the first stage of the Ballymun regeneration proposal into many separate applications, the effect is to avoid the threshold above which a single application would require a mandatory EIA.

"The form of assessment used did not conform to the high degree of public consultation required under European law," a spokesman insisted.

"What went on instead was a series of meetings - not designed to investigate alternatives but simply to enlist support for an already determined proposal, on the patronising principle that the authorities know best."

FIE says it will now lodge a single appeal against one of the decisions, so as to secure the right to consider the legal alternatives "should An Bord Pleanala fail to rectify the situation".

"Any delays resulting from these actions should not be blamed on environmental watchdogs, but on Dublin Corporation, which appears to think it can continually avoid its responsibilities under European law," the spokesman concluded.

A spokesman for Dublin Corporation was not available yesterday. However, the city manager, Mr John Fitzgerald, has strongly rejected FIE's claims, "especially as everybody will accept that we have carried out the most exhaustive public consultation project in association with this".

Mr Fitzgerald said he flatly rejected that the corporation had undertaken any "legal ploy" to avoid an EIA, and further commented that "it is of immense concern that large-scale public projects which are for the greater good can be held up by an individual or group complaint when due process has been gone into".

Mr Fitzgerald said his comments were not to be taken as denying anybody the right of objection but he felt that "there is a balance and that balance is maybe a little bit skewed at present".

Mr Fitzgerald added that he was not very familiar with FIE and he couldn't comment in detail until the objection, of which the corporation was indirectly notified only last Friday, was gone into in detail.