Amid push for more land for housing, Swords councillors reaffirm commitment to protecting greenbelt

Normally, Tony Flynn said, he walks around his hilly suburban neighborhood in Swords. But on Sunday morning, it was lashing rain with no sign of let-up.

Flynn lives at the far end of a cul-de-sac bordering the greenbelt in River Valley.  

His property has a hedgerow, and he and his wife have a bird feeder where little birds emerge and hide among the branches. 

He said he sees the greenery around his house as a kind of protection for them, a safe route. “They can hide from bigger birds and follow the hedge,” he said.

He and his wife have to restock the bird feed constantly, he said. 

The greenery in the area is a quiet luxury, he said. “This is the last bit of breathing space. Once it’s gone, it’s gone.”

The greenbelt, stretches of agriculture and trees and park, is a boundary he’s fought to protect for decades, through the Save Swords Greenbelt group, which has campaigned for more than 25 years.

The loose committee of residents who have been campaigning for two decades to protect the green space has learned to pop up when needed. 

“Sometimes there’s only a few of us,” Flynn said. “People think if we’re still around, that’s enough. But it’s not. We pick up when there’s something to fight for.”

Recent orders from the national government to councils, instructing them to rezone more land for housing around the country have put the group back on alert.

In late July, the Minister for Housing, Fianna Fail TD James Browne, issued guidelines to councils, telling them to update their development plans with higher targets for new homes – and more residentially zoned land to go along with that.

It was in this context that, at the Balbriggan/Rush-Lusk/Swords Area committee meeting on 9 October, Labour Councillor James Humphreys asked, in a motion, for a report from the chief executive on measures in place to protect Sword’s greenbelt from development.

“So that National Planning Framework targets do not erode the towns designated open space and green infrastructure,” it says.

“More than enough”

At the meeting on 9 October, Róisín Burke, a senior planner, told councillors that Fingal County Council is reviewing whether it has enough land zoned for housing.

“The review is currently ongoing and at an advanced stage and is expected to be completed in the coming weeks,” she said.

Humphreys, the Labour councillor, said later on the phone, that Swords has “more than enough” land zoned residential, exceeding what the department has asked for, so it shouldn’t have to rezone more.

The affordable housing crisis isn’t the fault of councillors and zoning, said Humphreys. “We’ve zoned plenty of land for housing – that’s what’s in our power.”

Sinn Féin Councillor John Smyth says he thinks that there may still be pressure to add even more land to the pot, now zonings are being reviewed. “Even if we’re near or above what’s required.”

Not that it would mean more homes are built, he says. “You could rezone all this land. But if you’re not funding the infrastructure – Irish Water, ESB, Metro – it won’t happen anyway.”

Smyth pointed to developments around Swords that have planning permission, but which are stalled. 

“At the West Estuary lands, for example, Cairn Homes got permission for 640 apartments,” he said. “But they can only build a third until the Metro is up and running — that could be 20 years away.”

There’s also Dunsink, which a feasibility study found could deliver 7,000 housing units, and then Knocksedan, where some would-be residents have not been able to move into new homes for lack of water connections.

Protecting the greenbelt

In July, the Department of Housing set out targets for Fingal County Council of adding 1,717 homes a year from 2020 to 2025, and 3,153 homes a year from 2025 up to 2034 – a total of 40,115 homes.

Meanwhile, the county development plan 2023 to 2029 says that the county had, at the time of drawing that up, developable land – including within its long-term strategic reserves at Dunsink and Lissanhall – which could hold an estimated 41,500 homes.

Land around Swords is listed as the biggest contributor to its residentially zoned sites – with 329ha with space for about 12,875 homes, the plan says.

But there’s also a green belt in place around Swords in the development plan, with lands zoned GB, which protects green space by safeguarding “the innate rural value of the Fingal countryside”, it says.

Although Flynn is particularly concerned about a patch of this greenbelt to the west of his area, east of Knocksedan, and south of Ward River Valley Park that he fears might be ripe for development.

The new housing target from the government led Humphreys, the Labour councillor, to press council officials at the meeting on protections for the green belt. 

“Over the next weeks and months, we're probably going to be discussing this topic an awful lot as we go forward into the new development plan,” he said, at the 9 October meeting

“I think dedicated land for biodiversity is just important. We create space for nature to flourish, establishing woodlands,” said independent Councillor Joe Newman. 

It can “not only enhance the ecological health of our area, but also provide invaluable learning opportunities for our children”, he said.

Independents4Change Councillor Dean Mulligan said later that keeping the greenbelt intact is “as much about biodiversity and community identity as it is about planning”.

“If you chip away at it, Swords will just merge into everything else,” Mulligan said. “You lose that buffer – that sense of where one place ends and another begins.”

At the meeting, Burke, the senior planner, listed the many provisions in the current development plan which focus on protecting greenbelts.

The greenbelts are there to check sprawl and protect the countryside, her report says, and preserve land for recreation, biodiversity and farming.

About 6,090ha in Fingal – about 13 percent of the county’s land – is zoned as greenbelt, said Burke’s report.

How planning applications are dealt with shows how those provisions are working in practice, said her report. 

“Of the 27 applications for new housing in Greenbelt areas since the adoption of the current development plan, 13, or less than half were granted permission,” said Burke.

Smyth, the Sinn Féin councillor, said there had been worrying precedents around planning applications in areas considered greenbelt. 

He referred to a recent planning proposal beside Forest Road, a central road connecting the neighbouring communities. 

The proposal submitted to the council in July by Golden Port Homes Limited, is to build 109 homes next to lands zoned greenbelt.

Among the concerns raised in submissions on that planning application were to a proposed road through the greenbelt lands.

At the meeting, councillors from across parties supported Humphrey’s motion asking for a report on how the greenbelt would be protected.

Fine Gael Councillor Luke Corkey, later by WhatsApp, said he was “happy to be able to state on the record of the committee that I support that concept, and it's a concept that is supported by all seven councilors in the Swords area”. 

“I think that's very important,” he said.

The future of Swords

Fingal’s development plan includes policies upholding the sanctity of the greenbelt. They said this encloses the city, prevents urban sprawl, creates a passage for wildlife.

On Sunday, Tony Flynn got out a map and showed where the greenbelt is, sitting between where he is now, at Ward River Linear Park, and Knocksedan, an isolated neighborhood just westward. 

At the meeting, Fianna Fáil Councillor Darragh Butler asked about the council buying up the greenbelt.

“I would like to see the council acquire as much land as possible so that people are able to walk and cycle,” Butler said. That way they could commute via woodlands, instead of by the road.

Newman, the independent councillor, said he’d “continue to fight for this [the greenbelt] to be preserved for communities”. 

“I think dedicated land for biodiversity is just important,” Newman said. 

“We create space for nature to flourish, establishing woodlands, promoting forest school provisions, and not only enhance the ecological health of our area, but also provide invaluable learning opportunities for our children,” he said.

Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme.