"As you can imagine, you've got 20 parking spaces, and we come along and say we're going to take out two of them or something like that to give spaces for people on bikes, it doesn't go down particularly well."
“Talk about David and Goliath,” says Tony McDonnell, gesturing upwards at the seven-storey building directly next door to his home on Mayor Street Upper in the Docklands. “Well that is Goliath.”
Greater engagement? That’s welcome, says Lorcan Sirr, a housing lecturer at TU Dublin. But the council’s enthusiasm for trialling an app developed by a property-industry PR executive is worrying, he says.
Developers wanting to build big apartment blocks have to say if there’s enough social infrastructure around. Their answers often differ from residents’ views.
If a restaurant wants to offer takeaway service, it’s supposed to get planning permission, since the council tries “to prevent an excessive concentration”.
At Monday’s monthly meeting, councillors voted down the idea of relaxing rules around homes in back gardens, and railed against recent building heights changes.
