Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Labour)

I thank the Minister of State for attending. The development taking place in the north fringe of Dublin city, or the south fringe of Fingal county, is perhaps one of the largest urban developments in the history of the State. New areas are being developed in places such as Beauparc, Clongriffin and Belmayne. From Clonshaugh to Belcamp through Clare Hall and Donaghmede, and on to Baldoyle and Portmarnock, well over 20,000 housing units, mostly apartments, are being built, approved or passing through the planning process. Similar large developments are being constructed as part of the continuation of the north fringe in the Minister of State's constituency, Dublin West and Dublin Mid-West.

ln response to my campaign and that of local residents and other development bodies, Dublin City Council prepared a north fringe action plan six years ago. However, this was little more than a very basic high-density urban design strategy laid out in the form of a few simple maps and pious aspirations about "block layouts", "urban gain" and "maximising potential linkages" through public transport. It only referred to a part of the north fringe. In spite of fleeting references to public transport, there was no reference to community infrastructure, be it associated with preschools, schools, third level institutions, hospitals, primary care centres, Garda stations, security facilities, youth and recreational facilities, sports facilities or facilities for seniors.

The outgoing city manager, John Fitzgerald, who will be retiring in the next few months, and county managers Willie Soffe and John Tierney have signally failed to address the great infrastructural challenges posed by building this new city on the northside. Even professional planners and architects believe the area has the potential for a major planning disaster, a soulless Milton Keynes imposed on Dublin North-East and a repetition of the grave errors of an earlier generation of county and city managers, architects and planners in north and west Dublin.

An example of the abysmal failure of the local government system in this regard is the almost total lack of co-operation between the two local authorities concerned. In a previous debate I compared the relationship to that between Croatia and Serbia.

On my suggestion approximately three years ago, city manager John Fitzgerald agreed to the establishment of the north fringe forum, which was intended to be a representative forum for all the stakeholders, including local residents and development bodies, local representatives, Dublin City Council and Fingal County Council, the Departments of Health and Children, Education and Science, Justice, Equality and Law Reform and Transport, the Garda Síochána, CIE, the HSE, An Post, Eircom, the Northside Partnership and others. Despite the best efforts of the forum's chairperson, Mr. Clive Brownlee, the north central area manager, Declan Wallace, the deputy manager, Ms Celine Reilly, and their staff, the forum has essentially become a talking shop that meets every quarter.

I asked the Taoiseach several times in this House to establish the north fringe forum as a statutory body like the Dublin Docklands Authority but he has consistently refused to do so. Why could this not be done? ln the central area of the development, a very serious issue has arisen as to why the city manager and his planners permitted and approved plans for over 7,000 apartments and a huge ancillary development without any significant new open space. It is true that Father Collins Park is being upgraded, following a design competition won by an Argentinian firm, but the park was laid out for the existing residents of Donaghmede and Ayrfield.

Six years after the issuing of the plan, there is no definite proposal for a primary care or new hospital facility, despite reports to the forum that Beaumont Hospital, the nearest hospital, is at 120% plus capacity. The Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform has refused point-blank to countenance a new Garda station for the new city. We are only promised community gardaí on mountain bikes.

I contacted representatives of the two main churches in the country to ask if they had any plans for primary education in the area. Educate Together has been proactive in this regard. However, on the Stapolin-Baldoyle side of the development there is no firm plan for a school. There is no educational vision, at any level, to address the needs of perhaps 50,000 new residents who are to move into this district up to 2014.

I was looking at the statue of Thomas Davis behind me and thought of his ideal of a national education system, yet 170 or 180 years later we are nowhere near achieving this. One has to ask for sponsors. There is no national education system at all and the Minister for Education and Science presides over a private system.

On public transport, a new station on the DART line was supposed to be the centrepiece of the developments but key road network plans are way behind schedule and An Bord Pleanála inexplicably agreed to allow a huge section of Clongriffen to be inhabited before the opening of the new station, which is to be as late as 2008 or 2009. Currently the new inhabitants of Beauparc and Clongriffin do not even have a weekend bus service. The postal service was recently taken out of one of the older parishes of Friarswood, but there are no plans, whatsoever, for the north fringe. During the planning process I inserted the requirement for a fibre optic broadband link to every home and business in this new city. If this is happening, nobody knows or has a clue. No one is invigilating it.

A key depressing feature of the proposals submitted by the developers is the attempt to continually make more dense this already high density plan. People in Dublin North-East have been ignored by the two local authorities and their political masters in this House, the Taoiseach and the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Deputy Roche. It is still not too late to establish the north fringe forum on a statutory basis, like the Docklands Authority. It is not too late to look at the possibility of a strategic development zone. There are no plans as yet as regards a major chunk of this development, despite the developer, Mr. Gannon, trying to jump the gun a year ago. The Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government should call in the two managers concerned, the outgoing manager of Dublin City Council and the Fingal manager, and ask them for full accounting.

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