Sir, - Your feature by Frank McDonald on protesters who get "their teeth into the planning process" (The Irish Times, July 24th), unfortunately missed the meat of the matter at Ballymun.
The appeal to An Bord Pleanala by Friends of the Irish Environment does not include the demolition of the high-rise flats as a ground of appeal. We do note that this plan flies in the face of the professional survey commissioned by the Corporation and its 1994 decision to opt for partial demolition and partial refurbishment. This survey included 539 face-to-face interviews and demonstrated that 86 per cent of the residents of the flats preferred partial or full refurbishment to the demolition of their homes.
FIE argued only two grounds in its appeal to demonstrate why an Environmental Impact Assessment was required.
The first ground was the reduction in overall open space from over 90 hectares to 26.4 hectares, particularly the proposed reduction in Ballymun's main public park - Poppintree Park - from 27 hectares to an unspecified area. FIE has also made numerous submissions relating to the loss of open spaces at the neighbouring Santry Woods.
The other ground has great consequence for the development of northern Dublin: drainage. The surface water drainage at Ballymun already floods at many locations and has been the subject of endless complaints to Dublin Corporation. This is not surprising, considering that parts of Ballymun were built on a marsh and that one Irish meaning for the Tolka River is "the flood".
In their "environmental appraisal", the developers show clearly that this situation will worsen when the surface area of Ballymun is doubled from 120 to 222 hectares. Even with the proposed mitigating measures for which no designs or costings have been seen by the public, the "appraisal" admits that surface flooding will increase within the estate.
The Corporation has refused to release details of the "new Ballymun" drainage plans to An Bord Pleanala. It claims that this is solely a matter for subsequent agreement before development commences between Dublin Corporation and Ballymun Regeneration Ltd, a company whose subscribers are all members of Dublin Corporation.
In view of the fact that the Bacon report recommends 17,000 more houses on the flat plains of north Dublin, The Irish Times serves its readers and Irish society as a whole poorly if its feature articles spend more time characterising the nationality or origins of members of groups like ours rather than correctly informing them about the grounds of our submissions. - Yours, etc., Roger Garland,
Friends of the Irish Environment, Butterfield Drive, Dublin 14.