Sir, – Dr Jonathan Healy noted (October 14th) that “now we hear of (Dublin City) Council’s plans to erect a 2.75m flood defence wall along Clontarf Road”.
Well, no actually. The plan has been in preparation since 2007 and I appear to be only person to have been aware of it. Politicians, representative associations and others seem to have been snoozing through the gestation and have only emerged from their slumbers as the shovels are about to go into the ground.
Orla Kelly (October 14th) notes that she “wants her kids to grow up and appreciate [the Clontarf seafront’s] beauty, and to enjoy the same facilities that [she] did growing up”. A kind of “preserve Clontarf in aspic or under water if it comes to that” point of view.
Miriam Lord notes (Home News, October 15th) the “recent news” of the proposed works in negative terms. Recent? 2007? I urge everyone to step back a little.
The scientific consensus is that global warming is a reality, that adverse weather incidents will increase in number and intensity and that sea levels will rise. The Clontarf seafront is already prone to flooding and is one of the most vulnerable sections of Dublin City’s coastline. I have seen the council’s plans as a welcome step to protect us and to future proof things in a manner all too often missing in Ireland.
We are ungovernable as a country if a project which has gone through proper planning procedures and which has obtained the necessary authorisations can be stopped in its tracks at the last moment on the basis that “Oops, we appear to have missed something along the five-year course of preparing this thing”.
Allied to this is a particularly virulent bias in Clontarf against anything happening (except an inundation from the Irish Sea, perhaps). This was best illustrated a while back in relation to a proposed re-development of the Clontarf baths site, a foetid dilapidated eyesore if ever there was one. The objectors from Clontarf noted in their submission against the development that “Clontarf was in the first instance a residential suburb and not a seaside resort”. While panicking about the baths, they appear to have overlooked the sea defence project.
I have a personal interest here: I do not wish my home to be flooded and I was glad that, at this time of economic darkness, funding was to be applied to protecting Clontarf. – Yours, etc,