Have your say on the future of Donabate

Post Reply
CommunityCouncil
Posts: 22
Joined: 22 Feb 2019, 16:31
Been thanked: 3 times

Fingal County Council is kicking off preparation of an Urban Framework Plan for village centre, but is refusing to permit the community to engage in a proper public consultation on this plan.
Donabate Portrane Community Council is concerned that this framework plan is primarily about permitting more development in the village.
Fingal County Council is only permitting a selected number of representatives of local organisations to take part in consultation on this important plan.
What the Urban Framework Plan is supposed to do is to create a plan to consolidate and improve the village centre by creating a new urban centre to replace the current hodgepodge of commercial offerings.
This is so that the commercial centre of Donabate better reflects the needs of the community.
Given that the population of Donabate and Portrane is increasing from 10,000 to some 26,000 people (making it comparable in size to such large towns as Athlone, but without even a fraction of the facilities), Donabate Portrane Community Council welcomes this long-overdue and much-needed initiative.
However, Donabate Portrane Community Council has grave concerns about how Fingal County Council is proposing to develop this Urban Framework Plan without real public participation.
And there are very concerning aspects of the proposed Urban Framework Plan coming to light, such as proposals to use part of the train station car park for commercial development.
Donabate Portrane Community Council has written to Fingal County Council to register its objection to this sham of a public consultation process in the strongest terms and has called upon Fingal County Council to hold a proper public consultation, but the council has refused.
In a bid to avoid the future of Donabate being decided behind closed doors,, Donabate Portrane Community Council is calling on all residents to come to the closed-doors meeting in Donabate Library on Tuesday, 21 January, between 6pm and 8pm.
Let Fingal County Council know that this community will not stand for being excluded from participating in the preparation of the Urban Framework Plan.
aoifey
Posts: 84
Joined: 02 Nov 2017, 10:38
Been thanked: 10 times

this is an extremely worrying development.

why are only a handful of people being invited to a meeting which I believe is to decide the future of this town?
I don't know the content of this meeting but it seems likely that part (or all) of the discussion is to talk about the 6/7 story tower blocks that are being proposed for ballymastone. is this true? why isnt it a public consultation?

i have only heard of 1 attendee so far and that person seems to be a big FF supporter. Is that person attending on behalf of FF or on behalf of the community? Are our councillors attending? Anyone else know who else will be there?

there is another thread on here by someone who says they regret moving to donabate. I can see their point to an extent. i certainly don't regret moving here, but in 10 years time it's very likely we will become another ballymun without the infrastructure or closeness to town. (ie: will potentially be significantly worse).

what are our councillors doing? in my opinion absolutely nothing apart from posting on facebook saying how hard they are working. well, in my opinion you're not working hard enough. not working for the people.

we have a major pothole/crater on the railway bridge at Turvey avenue. Been there for some weeks now. People have been contacting the council and yet nothing has been done. why arent our councillors sitting at the desks of the roads department until they send someone out to fix it? It's time these councillors stopped being nicey nicey, stop doing what their party wants and get the finger out and work for the people. They aren't volunteers. They are getting paid. This is just one small example. There are countless others.

In my opinion there is one extremely hard working person who ran for council last time but didnt get elected. I'm not going to mention the name as some people will assume I know this person etc etc etc. I dont care at all for this persons political party but if you ever raise an issue with them, within an hour or so they are back to you with a response of some kind and then several follow ups. Now that's hard working. We get what we vote for I suppose. It's so frustrating.

i'm frustrated because i care for this great area. i care deeply about it. i worry for its future though and i think thats totally justified with what is being planned. Look at the distributor road. someone told me they had run out of money to finish it? Is that true? Look at the dangerous way they have left to road to the pitches in ballymastone. Look at that road and look at the number of kids who walk/cycle up there. There will be a serious accident there someday. Do the council care? Clearly not. I really genuinely believe they don't care.

Something else I saw recently was about why the next school isnt being built where it is supposed to be built. What we need is an investigative journalist to take this (and other things on) in this area. There is some amount of dirt to be dug up. (purely my opinion of course. ive nothing to prove any of that ;) )

/rant over
Post Reply