Council official apologises after local residents left out of loop on RCSI’s plans for York Street

Maria Dunne and three of her neighbours shuffled into the City Hall’s chamber on Monday afternoon.

As the door slowly opened and closed, the sound of a wedding downstairs in the rotunda entered the room in waves as a string quartet played Keane's single “Somewhere Only We Know”.

They grabbed seats in the visitor’s viewing gallery ahead of that evening’s meeting of the South East Area Committee, awaiting independent Councillor Mannix Flynn’s motions concerning York Street.

Dunne and the others are from York Street, which runs between St Stephen’s Green and Aungier Street, she said. 

She’s a third-generation resident, she said. “My granny was in the old tenement. My father lived in the tenements. And I lived in the old tenements.”

Flynn was set to raise the issue of the Royal College of Surgeons’ (RCSI’s) proposal to revamp the Stephen’s Green end of the street.

The RCSI had surprised locals and councillors when, at the September area committee meeting, they unveiled a vision to revitalise – and eventually pedestrianise – their end of York Street.

This would entail greening the street, introducing traffic-calming measures and adding street furniture. Designs in the presentation did not include improvements to the other end of York Street, where the flats are.

The RCSI went before councillors with this plan without first consulting their neighbours in the flats, Dunne says. After the presentation, “I put it into our group chat in the apartments. Nobody knew nothing about it,” she says.

A spokesperson for the RCSI has not commented when asked three times, twice in September and once on Tuesday, why they did not engage with the local community.

Council officials said on Monday that they had not realised the RCSI had not consulted with residents of the nearby flats about the plan.

In a report to the committee on Monday, Brian Hanney, the South-East Inner City and Pembroke Area Manager, said the RCSI had told his section in July that they had been engaging with the council’s traffic department about the proposals.

So his section invited the college to a committee meeting to outline their vision, he wrote. “We subsequently became aware that there had been no consultation with local residents.”

There was a miscommunication, Claire French, a senior executive engineer in the council’s traffic department told the meeting. “And we apologise for that.”

Interim measures

On Tuesday morning, there was a pair of new lights installed on York Street to mark where the college had added two zebra crossings outside the entrance to their campus, near Stephen’s Green.

Dark red tactile pavement had been added to the footpath too.

The orange crossing lights were still covered by black plastic bags. But they were almost good to go, said French, the council’s senior executive engineer. “We just need to unbag the signs and do a little bit of road marking.”

These were short-term measures that the college was rolling out in co-operation with the council’s Traffic Department, RCSI’s director of estates, Rowan Baxter, told the area committee in September.

Following the meeting, French met with local councillors Flynn and Labour’s Dermot Lacey on 2 October, according to the report by Hanney, the area manager.

The Traffic Department was keen to complete the crossing as there was a safety issue as the tactile surface outside the entrance to the non-working crossing was creating confusion, Hanney wrote, “and it is creating a risk for visually impaired pedestrians”.

Zebra crossings for all?

On Monday, Flynn responded to the RCSI’s measures by tabling the first of two motions that related to York Street.

The first motion asked the council’s Traffic Department to immediately install traffic-calming measures on “the entire length of York Street”, as well as nearby Mercer Street, Digges Street and Cuffe Street.

If the RCSI could be facilitated to install two traffic-calming measures on York Street so rapidly, the entire residential community in the area were entitled to the same treatment from the council, he wrote in his motion.

York Street has a lot of traffic from drivers using it as a rat run, or using its multi-storey car parks, Flynn said at the meeting. “The whole area just seems to be handed over to reckless traffic.”

The Traffic Department supported the installation of zebra crossings to facilitate the students in the college, he said. “I would demand that the Traffic Department, by way of apology, do the right thing and put traffic calming measures on the street.”

If they didn’t, Flynn said he would block the street in protest. “We’ll block the street entirely from day to night if necessary and to raise our point.”

Lacey, the Labour councillor, said that during the internal meeting on 2 October, the council accepted that the college hadn’t properly carried out a consultation and apologised for this.

The area was entitled to the measures Flynn was requesting, Lacey said. “I do personally believe that it was an unintentional gaffe on the part of the official that we met.”

But it was important to move on and use this to leverage for some improvements in the area, he said.

French, the council engineer, commenting on Flynn’s motion, said the Traffic Department apologised for the miscommunications during this process.

But the zebra crossings didn’t appear overnight, she said. “It was quite a few months of getting to that point. But look, we are where we are now.”

To address the wider issue of traffic in the area, the council appointed a consultant to carry out works at the York Street/Mercer Street junction, with works expected to take place in 2026, she said. “We should have that design in the next month.”

It’s a complicated junction that needs to be signalised due to the volume of traffic and speeds, she said.

Plans on hold

Towards the end of the meeting, Flynn asked the council to give him a commitment of a date for a consultation around any planned improvement works on York Street.

The plan is still “floating around the neighbourhood,” he said. “Can I just get a confirmation that the Royal College of Surgeons campus precinct area plan is null and void?”

Michelle Robinson, the council’s executive manager for the Central and South East Area said that from today, the completion of the pedestrianisation of the area would be done with the support of the community.

The RCSI would be advised that its plans for seating and planting are on hold, Robinson said. “That doesn’t have community support.”

There would be no further delivery of these plans until a consultation was carried out, she said.

Breach

Then Flynn introduced a second motion, asking the committee to express its disappointment that the local area councillors were excluded and ill-informed about the RCSI’s proposed regeneration of the street.

It is going to take some time for him to trust the council again after this ordeal, he said. “As a matter of fact, I would be seriously considering resigning from Dublin City Council.”

Green Party Councillor Claire Byrne didn’t agree with the motion though, she said. “Because I support zebra crossings.”

Nobody was talking about zebra crossings, Flynn said. “It’s the manner in which it took place. The zebra crossings, we all want.”

The pair entered into a heated exchange, talking over each other about the nature of the motion.

“Did you read the motion?” Flynn asked.

“I did read the motion, thank you very much,” Byrne replied.

Flynn’s motion was noted.

Byrne’s position was that she was in favour of zebra crossings, she said after the meeting. “That crossing is desperate for pedestrians.”

There were huge questions to be asked about how the RCSI handled the process, she said. “I support Councillor Flynn about questioning the process and the mistrust that it has caused.”

But, at the same time, if zebra crossings could be put in so quickly, that was a win, she said. “I hope that the residents there today were satisfied with the outcome. I’m glad they weren’t there for the end.”