Council says no grounds to pursue developer over failure to replace Dirty Old Tower at Clongriffin train station

The owner of the access tower at Clongriffin – which some residents rely on to get to the train station – hasn’t breached planning conditions, said a council official at a recent area meeting.

Councillors have been pressing Fingal County Council to ensure that there was universal and reliable access to the train station via the tower.

Those living on the Baldoyle side of the tracks have to use it to get to the station. But the lift is dirty and intermittently out of order, and the station is shuttered between midnight and 6am.

The Shoreline Partnership – a company connected with Richmond Homes, the developer that bought the site in 2019 – may have breached two of the conditions in the planning permission for it, Green Party Councillor David Healy had said.

Council officials issued warning notices.

But now, based on the developer’s responses, they don’t plan to issue any enforcement notice, said Fearghal McSweeney, an administrative officer in the council’s Planning and Strategic Infrastructure Department.

Residents remain frustrated about the lack of follow-through on a past promise made years ago that before more homes were built on the developer’s lands to the east, the tower – which was supposed to be temporary – would be pulled down and replaced with something better.

The Shoreline Partnership was expected to build the access point during the first phase of a big housing development of 500 homes –  in line with a now expired local area plan – said Samatha O’Flanagan, of the Myrtle-The Coast Residents Association.

But that hasn’t happened. Access to the station wasn’t made a priority, she said. “There are houses that have been started and finished and sold. But the stairwell hasn’t been touched.”

A spokesperson for The Shoreline Partnership did not respond when asked why it had not built a permanent access or whether it had a timeline for its delivery.

In line or not?

At the Howth-Malahide Area Committee in October, Green Party Councillor David Healy pointed to particular planning conditions that he thought the Shoreline Partnership may have breached.

The first of these conditions, number 17, said that the development of the lands should be phased in line with the planning application, with the council agreeing to the phasing plan before any works commenced.

It hadn’t done that, he said.

The Shoreline Partnership said, in its submission to the council in October, that it wanted to “regularise” its planning compliance.

What it had built so far – which, as of 3 October, was 117 houses, a road network and an attenuation pond – had been done largely in line with the phasing of its original planning application, it said. And it submitted a phasing plan for the rest of the development.

At the most recent area meeting, Fearghal McSweeney, an administrative officer in the council’s Planning and Strategic Infrastructure Department, said that the developer was now compliant with these conditions.

The council’s response was deeply embarrassing, said Healy, the Green Party councillor, at the meeting. The council was allowing the phasing to occur in the wrong order, he said.

The phasing was originally set out in the council’s 2013 to 2019 Baldoyle-Stapolin Local Area Plan, he says. “That was that the access to the train station would be built at the start.”

But, it’s being built at the end, he says.

A council planner’s report on Shoreline Partnership’s compliance submission says that the site phasing is no longer subject to the expired Baldoyle-Stapolin local area plan.

Stapolin Square, which includes the access tower, will be carried out during the second half of the second phase, the report said.

At the meeting, independent Councillor Jimmy Guerin said he didn’t think an enforcement notice was always the solution.

“I think at some stage, we’ve got to say to residents, this is not a problem that Fingal can solve,” he said. “There have to be other avenues open to you and to the community.”

He wasn’t happy with the content of the report, he said. “But it’s decisive, and at least we now know where we’re going.”

Taking the developer to court over an enforcement issue could drag this out for another two or three years, he said.

Access now

The second possible breach that Healy had pointed to, was condition 18 –  that the developer needed to submit a construction management plan to the council, which includes “maintenance of access to Clongriffin Dart Station at all times”.

McSweeney said Shoreline Partnership was deemed to be in compliance with that, too, as the access point was open during the railway’s operational hours.

There is no breach that they found in their assessment, he said.

Brian Murray, a senior executive officer in Fingal’s Planning Department, said that it is untrue to say that there is no access at the moment.

“We accept that there have been slippages,” he said, “and I think the developer has accepted that.”

But the developer has also submitted security protocols, he said. “I feel I have no basis in law, being fair and reasonable and judicious in my decision making, to proceed.”

McSweeney said that the developer had attributed the decision not to keep the access point open all night to anti-social behaviour, vandalism and physical attacks.

Social Democrats Councillor Joan Hopkins said that the very structure itself enabled this behaviour.

“If you build a cage in the middle of an isolated site, that’s what will happen,” she said. “So that’s their fault. Not the people of Baldoyle.”

Embarrassing was one word for the council’s response, said Hopkins, “and an utter failure to deliver for people is what I’d describe it as.”

Murray said he recognised the plight of the locals. “We are aware there is a complex situation out there, delays in the development and all the rest. We are not unsympathetic. But we have to deal with the planning enforcement matters in front of us.”

The situation will be best managed in a process with the other stakeholders, those being the National Transport Authority (NTA), Irish Rail and the developer, he said.

A council spokesperson said on Tuesday that the NTA has completed a feasibility and options selection study for design solutions to improve the temporary structure.

The council also understands the owner of the lands has carried out works around the stairwell to improve access and security, they said.

The NTA spokesperson said they will be replacing the lift, installing lighting and CCTV, and upgrading its external core.

Following discussions with the owner and the council, the NTA intends to go out to tender for these works at the end of the year, with their completion in the second quarter of 2025, they said.

At 6pm on Friday evening at Clongriffin Dart Station, there were groups of people, kitted out in Irish jerseys, and bound for the New Zealand rugby game in the Aviva Stadium.

They trailed up the access tower’s four flights of rusty stairs to the station entrance. None bothered to check if the lift was working.

Somebody had urinated in the lift, anyway. It had been in that state for at least two hours.

Local resident, Elaine Verdon had peeked in about 4pm, she says.

Even on a decent day, she would avoid the lift, she says. “It’s so rickety. I don’t even feel like it’s going to get me up and down.”

On Friday, she didn’t use it either. “I didn’t want to use it because it was so disgusting,” she said.