In the Liberties, the council inches towards construction of a full-sized sports pitch

Dublin City Council’s chief executive has given the go-ahead for the construction of a sports pitch on the site of the council’s Marrowbone Lane depot in the Liberties, a council manager said at a meeting on Wednesday. 

“I suppose the message from our chief executive [Richard Shakespeare] and management team is, ‘We would like to see this project proceed,’” Jamie Cudden told the South Central Area Committee.

The plan is also that work on the pitch won’t have to wait until the council has worked out exactly what will happen on the rest of the site, he said – which has been one potential speed bump.

For many years, local sports groups, councillors, TDs, and others have been campaigning for a full-sized sports pitch in the Liberties. There’s been silence, there’ve been false dawns, there’ve been delays.

At the moment, there are two possible pitches in the works: a “multipurpose municipal pitch” as part of the new housing project the Land Development Agency is building off Donore Avenue – and this other one at the Marrowbone Lane depot.

Last autumn, the council ran a public consultation on a vision to remake what’s now the council depot on Marrowbone Lane, reorganising it to make space for a full-sized pitch. 

At the meeting on Wednesday, Cudden, an executive manager at the council, and Eoin Swift, an administrative officer, were presenting the results of that consultation to councillors representing the area, in the Council Chamber in City Hall on Dame Street.

“It was overwhelming, the support for this project,” Cudden said. “And I was involved in some of the workshops and meetings and it was quite emotional, almost, in terms of – there was such a desire to see this move fast and it’s something that obviously the community have been pushing for for quite a while now.”

At the moment, there’s a severe lack of proper pitches in the Liberties, and in the public consultation “many” local clubs indicated that they have no home ground and must travel outside the area for training and matches. 

The next step toward building this new pitch on the Marrowbone Lane depot site is to put the project into the council’s “capital” budget, Cudden said. That’s its budget for big one-off projects. 

And then to do some site investigations, digging holes and things like that, to see what’s underground, and whether there’s any contamination, or archaeological remains, that the council would have to deal with along the way, he said.

“I would hope that some of the work would progress this year,” Cudden told councillors, “but I think what we’ll need to do is bring together some of our internal colleagues and put together a project plan and agreed timelines.”

The site and its complications

At the moment, the council is using the 4.1-hectare Marrowbone Lane depot site as a base for its area offices in Eblana House, as well as wastewater, roads maintenance and waste management services, and the St Catherine’s Sports Centre.

The previous council chief executive, Owen Keegan, set in motion a plan to consolidate many smaller depots across the city into two large “super” depots – and to use the spare sites for housing. That is still playing out. 

On a site near Ikea, the council has already built its new northside super depot, formally called the North City Operations Depot, borrowing €67.5 million to do it. It hasn’t yet built the new south side super depot – that’d likely be on the Marrowbone Lane site.

But in 2023, in an effort to force council executives to make room for a full-sized pitch on the site, councillors rezoned it as open space, blocking the construction of a new depot. Keegan was not pleased. That Z9 zoning remains in place still.

In the long term, the plan for the site includes reorganising it to make room for both the new “super” depot, and the new pitch. “I don’t envy you having to negotiate with council colleagues around the future use of it and all the different departments,” Green Party Councillor Michael Pidgeon said.

But, crucially, Cudden said at the meeting on Wednesday that the plan is to build the pitch first, rather than wait to sort all that out.

“What we’re being directed is that this [pitch] should be seen as a standalone project that will be frontloaded, which I think is important so hopefully that will kind of alleviate any concerns around long, long delays,” he said.

“I think there is the capacity to separate out the operational needs in the short term and the space for the pitch,” he said. “We’ve done some feasibility on that, and are just finalising that piece of work.” 

There are large open spaces in the centre of the site, including for staff car parking. Also, “Irish Water are leasing some of the land from us, and my understanding is we should have them out within the next few months,” said Labour Councillor Darragh Moriarty.

How big would the pitch be? asked Pidgeon, the Green Party councillor. 

“Is there now kind of a consensus that this does at least have to be essentially rugby-sized?” he asked. “Rugby would accommodate football, but also GAA practice and that sort of thing – it wouldn’t facilitate full GAA matches.”

Cudden said that “In terms of the GAA-sized pitch, that doesn’t look like it’s going to be feasible on the size of the site. I think it’s FIFA-size and rugby.” Although, Swift chimed in, it could possibly be used for junior GAA.

How much will it cost? asked Pidgeon. “We want to get to work so that some national, presumably some national money is there to try to get this done as soon as possible,” he said.

Cudden said that, from experience, it costs about €1.5 million to build a pitch like this. But the actual cost on this one will be impacted by what the council finds when it does its site investigations and boreholes, he said.

Doubt

Looking at the results of the public consultation, Sinn Féin Councillor Ciarán Ó Meachair said that one thing that stood out for him was that the majority of residents have concerns about the project. 

“In one sense that would be surprising for such a positive idea,” Ó Meachair said. “But if you read through the comments, the concerns are that they don’t think it’s going to be delivered.”

The council got 422 survey responses through its website, seven detailed submissions from local community and sports groups – and had three one-to-one meetings with representatives of sporting groups, Swift and Cudden’s presentation says.

Of the responses, 400 said that in planning what to do with the site, a new multipurpose pitch on the site would be “important” or “very important” for the community. Of the 422 respondents, 233 said they had concerns about the project.

“I suppose it just shows that the local community have had so many false dawns before,” Ó Meachair said, “so it’s really important that we deliver this this time and that this happens”. 

Yes, said Moriarty, the Labour councillor, “The point that’s jumping off the page in the presentation is, as has been alluded to by Councillor Ó Meachair, there is a concern about the deliverability and whether it’ll actually come to fruition.”

Moriarty sounded optimistic. “I’m confident, based on the fact that it has a designated project management team looking after it, it is being pushed along,” he said.

But, still, it’s not going to happen very fast, he said. 

Finding locations for the existing services in depot could potentially slow the council down, he said. “So I just think that that’s important that we’re kind of open and honest with people about that.”