Latest news with #DúnLaoghaire
Irish Times
2 days ago
- Business
- Irish Times
Watersports campus, navy berths, windfarm supports and offices to be part of Dún Laoghaire harbour's future
Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council has signed a €1 million contract for the design and planning of a national watersports campus in Dún Laoghaire harbour. The contract is a big step forward in planning for the national watersports campus, which has been an aspiration since the Stena Line ferry service left the harbour in 2014. The contract also comes as discussions are under way with the developers of the proposed Dublin Array wind farm to site an operations base in the area. Meanwhile, the Quarterdeck shared offices complex in the former ferry terminal has been cleared for opening after several years of delays. READ MORE In addition, Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown Co Council – which owns the harbour – is in discussions with the Naval Service over use of the Carlisle Pier as a key element of the force's east coast activities. While these projects are individually being progressed, a six–week public consultation on an overall master plan for the future of the harbour is to open June 16th. Members of the public and stakeholders will be invited to view a draft plan and share their views. The pre-draft consultation on the master plan last autumn received more than 1,000 formal submissions and 36 stakeholder meetings, resulting in an 'emerging vision,' the council said. The vision is of a vibrant area 'for water sports, marine industries, heritage tourism and community facilities, with a focus on accessibility, sustainability and economic growth', the council said. Almost 60 per cent of submissions received were in relation to water sports, 'reflecting the widely held interest in enhancing water sports access and infrastructure', the council said. Chief executive Frank Curran signed the design and planning contract for the national watersports campus with Ready Architecture + Urbanism Ltd in May. [ 'It's a stunning setting for any cafe, but this one has extra-special credentials' Opens in new window ] The campus is to also serve as the home for the national governing bodies of water sports organisations and an event venue. New facilities in the harbour for the watersports campus include a slipway, improved high-performance sailing facilities, a training and maintenance building in the Coal Harbour and improved launching facilities. The cost of the master plan is understood to be in the region of €1m and the project has been awarded €852,845 from the Department of Tourism and Sport 's Large-Scale Sports Infrastructure Fund. Last week the council revealed it was also in discussions with RWE, the developers of the proposed offshore Dublin Array Windfarm. RWE has lodged a planning application with An Bord Pleanála which includes a cable route, substation and operations and maintenance base for the wind farm. The council said it hoped there 'might be synergies with the ferry terminal project'. 'We are now working towards a lease agreement for the areas concerned,' the council said. [ Public innovation investment 'has not kept pace' with private sector, Ibec says Opens in new window ] The former Stena Line ferry terminal has been the subject of proposals for shared office spaces, going back several years. The project was delayed by the Covid pandemic and more recently over fire safety certification, but the ground-floor section of the co-working office space is now ready to open. The process of opening the first floor as co-working office space is under way and 'expected to be completed imminently' the council said. In a separate move, council executives have held meetings with Naval Service management in relation to the potential use of the Carlisle Pier. The pier is frequently visited by navy ships and the LE George Bernard Shaw has benefited from nine new fender installations which were set up in August 2023 to cater for larger ships. Initial discussions saw the Naval Service express a preference for exclusive access to the whole pier, and while this was not acceptable to the council, it said a section of the pier could be dedicated to the Naval Service 'at a cost'. 'The proposal and associated valuation for lease of the required section of the pier is currently being reviewed by the Naval Service,' the council said. Local Fianna Fáil TD Cormac Devlin – who as council Cathaoirleach in 2017 marked the bicentenary of the harbour in a ceremony with President Michael D Higgins – added more ambition to the plans. [ Ireland cannot protect its waters alone, UN expert says Opens in new window ] Mr Devlin said in addition to maintaining Dún Laoghaire as a key sailing hub, priorities should include restoring the storm-damaged sun shelter on the East Pier, and reopening the historic tea rooms at the West Pier. They were, he said, 'small but symbolic projects that should be advanced without delay'. A spokeswoman for the council said the draft master plan will set out 'a comprehensive and long-term vision for a 'living harbour', focusing on improving recreation, tourism, and economic vitality while also building climate resilience and increasing biodiversity'. She said, 'It includes proposed actions over short, medium, and long-term time frames and addresses key themes that emerged from the pre-draft phase, such as improved connectivity, waterfront access, and spaces for community and recreation.'
Irish Times
6 days ago
- Business
- Irish Times
Renovation of social home in Blackrock cost local council €200,000 to bring back into use
Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council spent more than €200,000 bringing a vacant social home in Blackrock, south Dublin back into use last year. The local authority said it spent €503,142 on 'three major refurbishment properties' to re-let in 2024. This included the property in Blackrock, which was built in 1957 and had the same tenant for 63 years. A unit in Glasthule, built in 1934 with the same tenant for 39 years, cost €146,414. The other property was in Dún Laoghaire, constructed in 1932, had same tenant for 49 years, and cost €138,581. 'They were all major refurbishments due to the condition of the properties when they were handed back to the Council,' a spokeswoman for the council said. READ MORE 'One required an existing extension to be demolished and rebuilt, all required works such as electrical rewiring upgrade works, energy upgrades works, insulation works, external roof works, full new kitchen installations and replastering of internal roofs and walls.' [ Intimidation in a Dublin suburb, and the derelict house being used as stables Opens in new window ] The Department of Housing and Local Government said it is committed to supporting local authorities implementing an asset management ICT (information and communications technology) system to allow for 'strategic and informed planned maintenance work programmes' supported by stock condition surveys. 'This approach will ensure that homes are maintained on an ongoing basis and not only maintained at the time of vacancy in some cases after a significant period of time,' it said. 'This will result in less works required on re-let, less costs associated and ensure homes are turned around as quick as possible.' The Programme for Government commits to introducing a new voids programme, to implement long-term strategic reforms and mandate local authorities to establish voids frameworks to improve the turnaround of vacant social housing units. However, the Department said there is 'no set time frame in place' for the new programme. Void is the term given to when tenants vacate houses or flats, either transferring to somewhere more suitable or leaving to purchase their own property. The death of a tenant or a marital breakdown can also result in a void unit. [ Elderly residents of Dublin 8 complex still feel 'unsafe' despite installation of security gate Opens in new window ] Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council, which covers Blackrock, Dundrum, Dún Laoghaire, Sandyford, Killiney, Shankill and Stillorgan, said it re-tenanted 111 properties last year as part of what it would consider to be 'normal re-let processes'. The average cost per property was €31,190. 'The length of time a property remains vacant depends on the condition of the property when it is returned to the council and the amount of information required to complete the allocation process,' it added. 'Every effort is being made to ensure properties are tenanted as quickly as possible. In 2025, re-let works have been completed on 39 properties to date at an average cost of €17,580.' The council's average re-let time for vacant properties in 2023 was 23 weeks. Dublin City Council said the average cost of refurbishing void units in 2024 was €44,000. It said when a unit becomes vacant it allows two weeks for tenants to remove any personal belongings, a 10- to 16-week period to revamp the property as well as a two-week period to allow a new tenant to inspect the property and move in. Fingal County Council said it refurbished and brought back into use 79 voids, excluding energy efficiency retrofit works, at a total cost of €1.7 million (or an average of €21,519 per unit). The average re-let period was 33 weeks. South Dublin County Council said it allocated 184 re-let properties at an average turnaround time of 20.64 weeks last year. Taoiseach Micheál Martin hit out at local authorities for the delay in releasing vacated properties to those on waiting lists in the Dáil last month. Mr Martin said local authorities take 'too long to release a home that has been vacated'. 'It can take sometimes months or a year for the local authority fill the same house again, and they cite all sorts of reasons, and it's not good enough,' he said. 'And now they're looking for more and more grants to fill those voids.' He said those homes 'should be filled fairly quickly, within a week or two of a house being vacated, unless there's some structural issue' but added that the majority of cases did not involve structural issues.
Irish Times
19-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Paul Durcan: ‘Poetry was a gift that he loved to give others'
Kathleen MacMahon I knew Paul a little, as a neighbour in Ringsend and a friend of my mother's and my aunt's. When my mother died, in 2010, he came up to me at the removal and thrust a piece of paper at me - a two-page portrait in verse that captured her perfectly, with 'her seaside airs and graces'. I asked him to read it at her funeral the next day, which he very graciously did. Then he stood in the road and blocked the path of the hearse, clutching at his hair with grief. Utterly poetic. The poetry was a gift that he loved to give others. I remember when he was launching The Days of Surprise in 2015, there was an event at the Pavilion in Dún Laoghaire. I went to it with Maeve Binchy's widower Gordon Snell and her cousin, Sara Burke. We were having supper beforehand at a restaurant near the theatre, and Paul was at a table nearby with his publicist. He and Gordon didn't know each other well, but they reminisced about a St Patrick's Day parade they'd attended in Chicago with Maeve. Gordon, ever the gentleman, wrote Paul a note that was delivered to the dressing room before the reading. We took our seats in the theatre and Paul came on stage and read a poem he'd just written for Gordon. I was struck not just by his speed in dashing off a poem, but by the elegance of the offering, like presenting someone with a flower. Even though he told me afterwards in an email that 'readings are fearful things that slice years off my life'. This is the poem: READ MORE for Gordon, and remembering Maeve, and all those days long years ago on the shores of LSD in white stretch limos laughing ourselves into kingdom come love Paul He inhabited the role of poet so completely. The poetry was not just in his work but in his demeanour, his everyday interactions. Bumping into him in the grocery aisle in Tesco in Ringsend, he would launch straight into a conversation that might have been a poem and perhaps soon would be. 'Do you think Bill Clinton is a PHONEY? I think he's a PHONEY.' Even his e-mails were broken into stanzas and capitalised, with an aside to note the words he loved, like Scandinavia. Everything he did and said came out as poetry. He was the real thing! Conor O'Callaghan I first met Paul Durcan in the summer of 1984. He was sharing a room with our father in the Rutland Centre in Templeogue. I knew his work from his appearances on the Mike Murphy show on the radio and was in awe of him. He came and stayed in our house in Dundalk shortly after. I was writing poems by then. Paul read them and was always so kind and supportive. 'Read Louis MacNeice,' he told me, 'and the new Mahon Selected from OUP, and Elizabeth Bishop.' My copies of those poets' books date from the end of that summer. We stayed very close for 20 years. We sat in his cave in Ringsend and talked poetry and art and Bob Dylan. I loved how, for someone as brilliant as he undoubtedly was, he had this childlike relationship to the given world. It was ever a source of absolute wonderment and/or bemusement. When, in 2013, I published a book of poems with a big long mad sequence at the end, I asked Paul's permission to dedicate it to him. Why? he asked. Because I loved him and his work, I said, and I wanted to salute him as a master, the Jacques Prevert of Dartmouth Square. He liked that last bit. His eyes crinkled and he gave that gap-toothed, down-curled smile of his. 'The Jacques Prevert of Dartmouth Square,' he repeated in that slow, deep voice of his. 'Golly!' The popularity of his work should never be allowed to cast a shadow over its quality, which is brilliant and which nobody will get rid of too easily. His inaugural reading as writer-in-residence in Trinity College remains the best poetry reading I was ever at. It was electric, like the storming of the Bastille. After his first poem, The Haulier's Wife Meets Jesus on the Road Near Moone, there was a moment's silence. Then we all just cheered and cheered…. Bernard MacLaverty I was saddened to hear of the death of the writer and poet, Paul Duncan. I had known and admired his work, in prose and verse, for many years. He had a totally individual voice which was instantly recognisable on the page with its feelings of concern, its wit, its humanity and its total honesty. One of the things that made him unforgettable was to hear him read or recite his work live. He would take the stage (even if it was an early morning) and command the audience with his eyes. He would wait for silence. When the room was utterly still he would begin - spellbinding each and every one of us with a mixture of solemnity and wit, humour and disquiet - reeling us in, telling us his truth. His work and his sound, for those of us who heard him, will never be forgotten. William Wall Paul has been a legend now for so long that it's difficult to find anything new to say about him. But I remember him well from his years in Cork, and in fact I remember the first time I heard him read. His reading style was electrifying, his writing was daring, different, shocking at times, but also amusing and engaging. Even though he was second fiddle to someone else that evening I can only remember his contribution. I remember his amazing ability, as Kavanagh put it, to 'Set an old phrase burning', his ability to satirise the norms of a petty bourgeois State and its icons, to set certain habits and values in crystal and then smash them. My favourite memory is the first time I heard him read Making Love Outside Áras an Uachtaráin. He will be sadly missed, not just by Neasa and his family, but by those people who were privileged to hear him either in person or on RTÉ. Sit ei terra levis. Aifric McGlinchey I was moved to tears when I heard at the Cork International Poetry Festival that we've lost Paul Durcan. In a room full of poets, we held a two-minute silence for him. And then Mary O'Malley read Googletown, which she dedicated to him. No other poet in Ireland has seemed to me more in keeping with the mystical wavelengths of connection than Paul Durcan. At the microphone, his range of tones and his presence commanded absolute attention. To hear him read was to be imbued with the sense of a transcendent light shining on each person, object or scene described. The listener would be embodied by a spirit of joy or outrage or empathy, swept up in the ebullience of his quirky originality. Durcan's poetry has that bewitching quality of effortlessness, along with wit and mercurial melancholy. If playfulness and intimacy are defining features in his work, he also proved to be the most versatile of poets: one moment, concrete, visually kinetic, the next, shape-shifting to combine topicality in ways no other poet can quite emulate. Quirky, fey, or a wrecking ball for social justice, his poems have a quality unique to him. Whether as seer or participant, young boy or a woman aged 81 'and new as a snowdrop', the speaker of his poems invites the reader to dive into a landscape or cityscape populated with people, birds, animals, fish, feeling and ideas, and experience that sense of recognition. I first met Paul at the 40th Hennessy awards. He was the judge of the Emerging Poetry competition and had chosen me as the winner. On the strength of that award, I think, my publisher offered to publish my debut collection. So, Paul Durcan was instrumental in beginning my life as a published poet. He also gave me a lovely endorsement for that debut. I met him again at the Ennis Book Festival, where I was invited to introduce him. He was warm, attentive, made proper eye contact. The kind of person that made you feel seen and heard. What an unusual and memorable individual. We have lost one of Ireland's most iconic poets. But we are lucky to have the legacy of his work. Affectionate, satirical, insightful, the immediacy of his cumulative observations brings us to this understanding: here we all are. The small rooms of his poems add up to a mansion of lived life. The totality of his work could be seen as a colloquial, cultural and psychological archive of what it means to be living in Ireland, in the world, at this moment in the continuum of history. Durcan never forgot the web of connection between self and world, between what we do in our solitude and in our most public interactions. Any time I need uplifting, I read his poems, and come away appreciating more fully our core human desire to connect, and to celebrate, even in dark times, this miraculous life. Enda Wyley I first met Paul Durcan in 1990. I was in my early twenties and took part in his poetry workshops in Trinity College, Dublin where he was Writer Fellow that year. Mostly, Paul told us stories about poets he knew, particularly Michael Hartnett, whom he revered. How could I ever forget the one of himself and Hartnett presenting themselves at the headquarters of Securicor in 1960s London only to both be hired – two young Irish poets in uniforms and peaked hats being dispatched to guard a financial institution and an air transport terminal in London. A tale worthy of a Paul Durcan poem, for sure. 'This head is a poet's head/ this head holds a galaxy,' Michael Hartnett once wrote, and I have always been convinced that Paul Durcan's head also held just that – a marvellous galaxy that lit up our poetry firmament. Today that light has gone out with the devastating news that Paul Durcan, the greatest of poets, has died. May he rest in peace. Martin Doyle I interviewed Paul Durcan in 1993 in London for The Irish Post to mark the publication by Harvill of A Snail in My Prime, his new and selected poems. I was struck by his mild demeanour, given the provocative titles of some of his works, such as Archbishop of Kerry to Have Abortion. He had an unrivalled reputation as a reader of his work, who, his fellow poet Derek Mahon wrote, 'with a microphone for a lute, can, like Orpheus, charm the birds from the trees'. 'The saying of poetry is what poetry is,' he told me. 'So I don't think of the tweo things as separate, they go together, it;s a form odf music. Every time you read, you never know if the house of cards is going to collapse or whether you'll get over Becher's Brook. Perhaps that's a better way of looking at it. These riders have ridden over the course God knows how many times but they never know if this is going to be the day.' As a kind of postscript to our interview, Durcan spoke of having spent several years after leaving school in London and how England had been good to him, which made the IRA's bombing campaign in Britain that much harder to accept. 'Like many Irish people, I feel helplessly angry with what the IRA do because London was a home to me when I had nowhere else to go. It gave me work, work which I wouldn't have got back in Ireland. I worked in the London Planetarium where my official job title was Stellar Manipulator. I was the guy who flung the stars up on the ceiling and here I was married and here my children were born. This country has been home to thousands and thousands of Irish people.' He feared that we would not learn the lessons of our troubled past. 'There's a poem in this book, In Memory of Those Murdered in the Dublin Massacre, May 1974. And I noticed when I read the poem here or back in Ireland people don't remember, they've forgotten.' Paul Durcan and his poetry will, however, be long remembered.
Irish Times
14-05-2025
- Business
- Irish Times
Cosgraves seeking €1.5m for Honeypark residential development site
With Honeypark, the large-scale residential scheme built by Cosgrave Property Group on the site of the former Dún Laoghaire Golf Club lands now completed, the Cosgrave family has instructed agent Hooke & MacDonald to find a buyer for a 0.24-hectare (0.6-acre) site within the development. The holding, located in a central position within the scheme, is guiding at a price of €1.5 million and has the potential for the provision of 32 apartments and a creche, subject to planning permission. A feasibility study prepared in advance of this sale by MCORM Architects suggests this proposed development could comprise a mix of 12 one-bedroom, 12 two-bedroom and eight three-bedroom apartments, with 26 surface car-parking spaces. The site is zoned Objective A under the Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Development Plan 2022–2028, supporting residential development. It overlooks a landscaped park and duck pond and is within walking distance of the Park Pointe neighbourhood centre, which includes Tesco Express, a pharmacy, cafe and medical services. The wider Honeypark development is almost equidistant from Dún Laoghaire's town centre (1.9km) and the N11 (1.8km). The scheme sits about 5km from junction 15 (Cornelscourt) on the M50 motorway and about 10km south of Dublin city centre. Glenageary, Monkstown, Salthill and Dún Laoghaire Dart stations are all within 2.6km, offering direct access to the city centre and the wider regional rail network. Several Dublin Bus routes serve the area. READ MORE Conor Steen of Hooke & MacDonald says: 'This site offers excellent development potential within a proven residential setting.'
Irish Times
13-05-2025
- Business
- Irish Times
Plan for 80 homes in Leopardstown approved as part of string of south Dublin projects costing €500m
Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown councillors approved the building of a new 80-home development in Leopardstown in south Dublin on Monday night – part of an overall housing programme worth almost €528 million. The 80-unit development of duplexes and apartments is earmarked for a site bordered by the M50 to the north and Leopardstown Road to the south, opposite the Leopardstown Rise housing estate. The development will include a mix of social and affordable units. Councillors who approved the scheme were told the development is one of some 16 housing schemes in various stages of progression which have a projected completion cost of €527,661,299. READ MORE The largest of the pipeline of housing projects is a scheme of 597 social and affordable homes currently under way at Shanganagh Castle, Shankill. The next largest is a development of 300 proposed for Ballyman, near the Co Wicklow border, which is at preliminary design stage. A further development of 129 homes earmarked for Blackglen Road in Sandyford is also at preliminary design stage, as are 100 homes proposed for a site at Lehaunstown, near Cabinteely. The list of proposed and current developments includes 24 homes at a site at Mount Anville, Dublin 14, and a single three-bedroom house at Cross Avenue, Dún Laoghaire. Councillors at Monday night's meeting were also supplied with a report from chief executive Frank Curran in which it was revealed the council received 640 applications for just 30 three-bedroom homes at Woodbrook, Shankill. The application portal was open for three weeks in April. The report also noted public submissions opened in March on a further proposed council development at Mount St Mary's, Dundrum Road, Dublin 14. This proposal is for 129 apartments in three blocks. While the councillors were unanimous in their approval for the 80-unit development at the Leopardstown Road site, some councillors expressed reservations at what they saw as a shortage of parking spaces on site. Fianna Fáil councillor Michael Clark said the reality was that 64 car-parking spaces was not enough for 80 apartments 'even if they use public transport five days a week and cycle six days a week'. He said parents would have to drive children to creches and he asked that in future developments the council give consideration to 'all citizens'. Cllr Kevin Daly (Ind) said creating a shortage of parking spaces in housing developments would lead to people parking on neighbouring streets and causing congestion. He said reducing the level of parking was often seen as reducing congestion 'but it is not, it is causing it'.
