This Traveller halting site, like others, was built on a historic landfill. “It seems to be a pattern across the state to build sites on dumps.”
“It really is worth noting that I am very concerned about the possibility for gases coming up through these existing homes,” Shay L’Estrange told an Oireachtas committee last month.
“That is a really big concern for me, even if we set everything else aside,” he said.
L’Estrange – coordinator of Ballyfermot Travellers Action Project – was before the committee to talk about the failure, again, to progress the years-long plan to fully regenerate Labre Park in Ballyfermot.
The regeneration of the Traveller site – realising a plan for 12 new-build homes and significant upgrades to 18 existing homes – had seemed on the cusp of starting earlier this year, after decades of promises.
Until L’Estrange got a call in April from Dublin City Council’s head of housing, Mick Mulhern, to say that flood risk – an issue he thought had been put to bed a few years earlier – meant the new builds couldn’t progress.
Retrofitting and refurbishing the existing homes would go ahead, Mulhern said – which he told the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Key Issues affecting the Traveller Community.
At issue still, though, is what that retrofitting and refurbishment is actually to mean – and whether it should and will include protection from historic-landfill gases.
Environmental surveys dating back years have said that underneath Labre Park, and the lands around it, is some kind of old dump.
Past reports have recommended greater investigation of its contamination, and the rate and routes by which gases such as methane may still be rising up.
Consultants in June 2019 put down some boreholes, at the request of the housing association Cluid, which at the time was leading on the regeneration project.
They concluded from the results that the level of gases released were low-risk, says their report, “in the absence of further appropriate monitoring data”.
There hasn’t been any further monitoring done.
L’Estrange says he has serious concerns that – even though the council has been aware that Labre Park was built on a historic dump for a number of years – they haven’t done much monitoring for existing residents.
He also pointed to how a later risk assessment, done in August 2024, said that the potential for ground gas exists on all brownfield sites, so all buildings should have appropriate gas protection measures.
But nothing has been done, he said. “It’s unacceptable.”
A spokesperson for Cluid said, back while it was still working on the project, it had adjusted its designs and plans based on the surveys that it commissioned.
That meant – for where the new buildings were planned – including provision for “the removal of contaminated soil and the use of membranes where soil would be disturbed”, they said.
But “at the point of handover, a full risk assessment had not been completed for the existing homes on the site”, they said. “This would typically be completed at detailed design stage.”
Given they handed it back to the council, it was envisioned that they would carry out those risk assessments at that stage, they said. “If the risk assessment determined that remedial measures (such as barriers and/or increased ventilation) were required, these would then be included in the Works requirement.”
At the Oireachtas committee, Mulhern – who noted that he had only been in his role for about 18 months – told TDs that the council is talking to the department about remediation funding for the landfill.
Echoing the Cluid spokesperson, he said the council had planned to include membranes to deal with gas emissions and radon within the 12 new builds.
And, they have also now committed to further survey works for the current 18 homes to determine exactly what was at issue and what measures would be required, he said.
“Those surveys had not been done in those homes at that time to determine what membrane or whatever – I am not an engineer – would be required,” he said. “We are still fully committed to that.”
TDs meanwhile pointed to a pattern.
“It is no coincidence that Labre Park was built on a dump,” said Sinn Féin’s Dessie Ellis. “We also have St Joseph's, which is built beside a dump.”
“It seems they have done this in the case of a number of Traveller sites and it is totally unacceptable that has happened over the years,” he said.
“My local Traveller site in Limerick would be Longpavement. That has been built on a dump as well,” said Limerick TD Sinn Féin’s Maurice Quinlivan.
“It seems to be a pattern across the state to build sites on dumps,” he said.
About 20 years ago, Dublin City Council had plans to put a civic amenity centre – a recycling and waste depot – on the lands just to the south-west of the homes at Labre Park.
TES Consulting Engineers took a closer look beneath the land.
They found construction and demolition waste, municipal waste and loose fill overlying natural soil and subsoils below the surface, their report says.
That was from historical dumping, it said. “Historically, waste and debris was used as a means of raising the topographic elevation of lands, which were low lying and waterlogged, as was the natural setting of this site and surrounding area.”
An environmental impact statement had said that, before any development, the council should sample the soil and check for contamination, monitor for landfill gases, and check the groundwater quality.
After tests, TES Consulting Engineers concluded that: “The detailed analysis of the soil and groundwater samples indicates that the materials deposited within the site have not resulted in gross contamination of the soil or groundwater environment. “
They didn’t monitor for gases.
But, in the end, an Environmental Protection Agency inspector who weighed in on the licensing for the civic amenity centre said that, “It is also my opinion that the production of landfill gas at this site would be low based on the type of fill historically deposited at this site.”
They set, in the recommended decision, the need to vent for any trapped gases as a precautionary measure when the facility was built. It didn’t go ahead in the end though.
In 2019, as Cluid, the approved housing body, was working on its plans for the regeneration of the Traveller homes at Labre Park, it too asked consultants to take a look at how to manage the lands.
Cluid looked at a slightly different area to the lands that had been considered for the civic amenity centre.
This survey was done on the bit of Labre Park where new buildings were planned, closer to the homes, said a spokesperson for Cluid on Thursday.
In a risk assessment, environmental consultants at WYG looked at what several pits, and three boreholes for gas monitoring, had found.
The WYG consultants said that there were a number of contaminants in the soil, which could “present a potential risk to human health assuming a future residential land use”, and “some of which are considered to pose a site wide risk following statistical consideration of the applicable contaminant data sets”.
So, “an appropriate detailed remedial strategy” should “be developed to address the potential risks identified”, their report said.
“The design of future remedial measures will be informed by the final proposed development layout,” it said.
Also, “low level ground gas was detected which was classified as low risk following consideration of the data as presented”, they said.
“Concentrations of methane and carbon dioxide were high across the monitoring rounds and often exceeded the recommended threshold values,” it said. But given fluctuations and a review of materials from the boreholes, they thought it was low-risk, they said.
“It is therefore recommended in the absence of further monitoring data that specialist ground gas protection measures be considered within future development,” it said.
Soil contaminants could be an issue if there is soft landscaping, it said, and low-level ground gas can present a risk to future site visitors and buildings “via service entry and accumulation within sub floor voids”.
A spokesperson for Cluid said that on the basis of this assessment, it had included in its plans the removal of contaminated soil and the use of membranes where soil was disturbed as part of its designs.
But when it handed the project over to the council, “Clúid did not have sufficient information to advise on whether membranes were an appropriate course of action for each individual home being redeveloped,” said the spokesperson.
In October 2023, the council had also asked Clúid to commission a Tier 1 Environmental Impact Assessment – which it did from RPS, relying on the past ground investigations.
“Overall, the risk was considered relatively low, largely due to the historical period during which the site was used as a waste facility,” said the Clúid spokesperson.
The RPS report did also recommend progressing “to Detailed Site Assessment (DSA) in accordance with the EPA’s Guidance on the Management of Contaminated Land and Groundwater at EPA Licensed Sites (EPA, 2013).”
“It is recommended that further intrusive investigation focus upon the c.12,000m2 area at the southeast of the site, which has not been assessed to date,” that report said.
It is also recommended that groundwater and leachate monitoring boreholes are installed on the site to enable assessment of potential risks from leachate migration.
And, due to the brownfield nature of the site – with extensive areas of “made ground” – it is recommended that future developments incorporate appropriate gas protection measures in accordance with current guidance and standards to prevent risks to human health, it said.
At the Oireachtas committee, Green Party Senator Malcolm Noonan asked whether there was currently gas monitoring on the site.
“No, not currently but that is one element of the further site investigations and surveys that will be carried out in the near future,” said Stephen Wearen, a Dublin City Council official.
What should happen next with the overall regeneration of Labre Park depends partly on what comes out of any future monitoring on gases and contamination, said L’Estrange, of Ballyfermot Travellers Action Protect.
But also – given that flood risk has killed any talk of adding new homes and expanding the site where it is – the council and councillors have to step up and rezone some of the lands just a whistle to the east of Labre Park for more Traveller housing, he said.
That's where a large swathe of industrial lands is currently being carved up, and rezoned, by the council, as part of the Kylemore masterplan.
At the Oireachtas committee, when Ellis, the Sinn Féin TD, asked about the possibility of a site for Traveller housing as part of that, Mulhern said it is being looked at.
“The Kylemore masterplan is currently going through its process,” said Mulhern.
“Other councillors have raised that process and our planning team are actively considering that exact issue at the moment about the identification of land for Travellers,” he said.
The draft masterplan is due to go back before councillors sometime in June or July, he said.
Councillors still looking to dename Herzog Park – and to rename Diamond Park after Terence Wheelock – say they’ve seen no progress from central government on regulations to make it an option.
As plans for the council to build it out progress, there remains something of a split among councillors as to what would be positive, and what would be possible.
“For many mothers, the issue is not a lack of ambition, it is wanting to work without being absent from their children’s everyday lives,” says its founder Karla Dragić.
With children as young as six being targeted, organisations on the ground have to respond, they say.
