CITY TRIBUNE
Residents demand CCTV to combat antisocial behaviour
Strolling up Castlepark Road on a Thursday afternoon earlier this month, workers were busy installing long overdue shelters at three bus stops.
Swinging right at Ballybane Community Garden brings you to the sole vehicular entrance and exit to the Merlin estates.
On the left, as you enter, is the Clós na Coille Traveller-specific accommodation, and further in are Bóthar Waithman, Sruthán Mhuirlinne, Coillte Mhuirlinne and Léas na Coille.
A mixture of privately-owned, affordable and social housing, there are around 400 homes in the neighbourhood that backs onto Merlin Woods.
Merlin Neighbourhoods Residents’ Association chairperson, Donal Lynch pointed to lampposts that were kitted out for CCTV cameras.
“When the estates were being built, the infrastructure was put in. The fibre optic cables were put in underground and connected to the poles for the cameras,” he says.
Housebuyers were promised the safety cameras when it was developed, back in 2006.
Newly planted flowerbed in the Sruthan Mhuirlinne Area, Ballybane.
The property crash came and the security was never installed. “We’re still waiting,” he adds.
On the face of it, CCTV doesn’t seem needed. Last week, the estate was positively tranquil. It’s a busy, family-oriented area with children playing on greens and bicycles, and teens chatting and hanging out.
There’s a fully-equipped playground, and in the distance is Merlin Castle. Adjacent to Bóthar Waithman is a green area, which has recently been granted funding to develop a multi-purpose sports facility.
So far, so good. Except, like many urban areas, it has problems.
“Two weeks ago my car was broken into, there was nothing taken out of it, just ransacked. It was an opportunistic crime. There is definitely a need for cameras,” says Róisín*, a young mother who lives in the estate.
“You see these cameras,” she says, pointing to privately installed CCTV on nearby homes in Coillte Mhuirlinne.
“It’s great to see them. There was a night last week I was woken up at 5.30 to screaming. It was madness and it’s frightening.”
The estate is open plan. Green spaces, roads and pathways blend into one another. This permeability can create a community and sense of belonging, but it has its downsides in terms of anti-social behaviour, says Donal Lynch.
He says people involved in petty crime and anti-social behaviour can disappear without trace into Merlin Woods.
“It’s one big open prairie, no divisions, so you can run through it, from one to the next . . . we back onto the woods at Doughiska, and it’s used sort of as a rat-run. It’s a lovely estate, with a lot of very good people but they’re coming from other areas, and if the cops come and chase them, they’re gone through the little rat-runs in the woods,” he says.
Residents sought fencing to close-off all bar the official walkways into the wooded area, but they haven’t been provided. “The City Council takes you so far, just to keep you happy, but . . .”
Mary*, who has lived for nearly four decades in Castlepark, the estate opposite Merlin, wants CCTV, too.
When asked if there are problems in Castlepark, Mary gives a sort of side-eye facial expression that screams: ‘Are you kidding? Of course we do!’
“Definitely,” she says. “Dumping and anti-social behaviour.”
The City Council, she says, won’t clean the alleyways backing onto the gardens of homes in Castlepark. Green areas are regularly used as dumping grounds for all sorts of rubbish – just recently, heads of rabbits were thrown in one alleyway, as well as nappies and sanitary pads.
“We’ve done the clean-ups ourselves,” she says. “We looked for cameras years ago, and got a petition that went all around Castlepark, but the Corpo (Galway Corporation now City Council) said they’d no money. That’s nearly 20 years ago. It was bad then, but now it’s 20 times worse,” adds Mary.
When the topic shifts to policing, Donal, Mary and Róisín agree that the location of the new Garda HQ on the Dublin Road hasn’t improved matters on the ground.
“Not really, sure that’s only offices,” says Mary. Róisín agrees: “If you ring the guards, you’re ringing Mill Street.”
Donal adds: “We’ve a very good community Garda at the moment; she’s excellent. She’s not long here but is very tuned in to what’s going on.”
The difficulty is, one community Garda – no matter how excellent – is not enough to police such a large area in Merlin, Castlepark and Ballybane.
“I remember when the community guard would walk the beat. Then we got two, and they were absolutely brilliant and they’d drive around at night, in their own cars. They used to get involved with the kids, and played football on the green, but then they retired,” recalls Mary.
Róisín agrees a greater Garda presence would help. “Now it’s just the odd drive-by in the patrol car. I wish they were here all the time, I really do,” she says.
Closing the Garda station at the Ballybane Gala store was a mistake, Donal believes. “There were two Guards there and they knew everyone. They’d nearly know when they (criminals) were going to make a move. It’s closed three years. It was right in the heart of the community. They moved the office into the new Garda station but we’ve only one community Garda for this whole area and you’d need three or four,” he says.
Community activist Donal Lynch.
Probably the biggest problem facing residents of the area is illegal dumping.
“When you look over this wall, you’ll get a shock,” says Donal, pointing to a stone wall separating Coyne’s field from the estate. He wasn’t wrong. The field is overflowing with rubbish.
An unofficial audit reveals bike frames, old plastic toys, plastic bins, wooden chairs, paint cans, car tyres, benches, galvanise, buggies, mattresses, and quite a lot of general household waste all thrown over the wall.
“It’s like the city dump,” says Donal. Mary adds: “They pull up and throw it over the wall, then it blows out on the road, and there are rats.”
Along the roadway leading towards the old Hillside estate are high walls, which create a blind-spot where people pull up in vans and trailers and dump indiscriminately, while out of sight.
It’s on an industrial scale, says Donal, as he points to scores of dumped car tyres in the field.
“That’s commercial, that’s not a guy getting a puncture and throwing one tyre away. The people up here are disgusted, people are doing their best but to have that at your back door is terrible,” he says.
Just like at the front of the estate, Donal Lynch and the residents’ association believe CCTV in lampposts could be an important tool in improving life on the estate.
“In every major city in Europe there’s an area that the authorities don’t take as much heed of. There’s a minority of anti-social behaviour here. Cameras would at least be a deterrent, and then if there is a problem, the Gardaí can use the footage. CCTV would just add to the security and peace of mind,” adds Donal.
*Names have been changed
From the Galway City Tribune – An impassioned plea for a ‘masterplan’ that would guide Galway City into the future has been made in the Dáil. Galway West TD Catherine Connolly stated this week that there needed to be an all-inclusive approach with “vision and leadership” in order to build a sustainable city.
Deputy Connolly spoke at length at the crisis surrounding traffic and housing in Galway city and said that not all of the blame could be laid at the door of the local authority.
She said that her preference would be the provision of light rail as the main form of public transport, but that this would have to be driven by the government.
“I sat on the local council for 17 years and despaired at all of the solutions going down one road, metaphorically and literally. In 2005 we put Park & Ride into the development plan, but that has not been rolled out. A 2016 transport strategy was outdated at the time and still has not been updated.
“Due to the housing crisis in the city, a task force was set up in 2019. Not a single report or analysis has been published on the cause of the crisis,” added Deputy Connolly.
She then referred to a report from the Land Development Agency (LDA) that identified lands suitable for the provision of housing. But she said that two-thirds of these had significant problems and a large portion was in Merlin Park University Hospital which, she said, would never have housing built on it.
In response, Minister Simon Harris spoke of the continuing job investment in the city and also in higher education, which is his portfolio.
But turning his attention to traffic congestion, he accepted that there were “real issues” when it came to transport, mobility and accessibility around Galway.
“We share the view that we need a Park & Ride facility and I understand there are also Bus Connects plans.
“I also suggest that the City Council reflect on her comments. I am proud to be in a Government that is providing unparalleled levels of investment to local authorities and unparalleled opportunities for local authorities to draw down,” he said.
Then Minister Harris referred to the controversial Galway City Outer Ring Road which he said was “struck down by An Bord Pleanála”, despite a lot of energy having been put into that project.
However, Deputy Connolly picked up on this and pointed out that An Bord Pleanála did not say ‘No’ to the ring road.
“The High Court said ‘No’ to the ring road because An Bord Pleanála acknowledged it failed utterly to consider climate change and our climate change obligations.
“That tells us something about An Bord Pleanála and the management that submitted such a plan.”
In the end, Minister Harris agreed that there needed to be a masterplan for Galway City.
“I suggest it is for the local authority to come up with a vision and then work with the Government to try to fund and implement that.”
The new Salmon Weir pedestrian and cycle bridge will be officially opened to the public next Friday, May 26.
Work on the €10 million bridge got underway in April 2022, before the main structure was hoisted into place in early December.
A lunchtime tape-cutting ceremony will take place on Friday, as the first pedestrians and cyclists traverse the as-yet-unnamed bridge.
The Chief Executive of Galway City Council, Brendan McGrath, previously said the bridge, once opened, would remove existing conflicts between pedestrians, cyclists and traffic “as well as facilitating the Cross-City Link public transport corridor over the existing 200-year-old bridge”.
The naming of the new bridge has been under discussion by the Council’s Civic Commemorations Committee since late last year.
One name that has been in the mix for some time is that of the first woman in Europe to graduate with an engineering degree – Alice Perry.
Ms Perry, who was from Wellpark, graduated from Queen’s College Galway (now University of Galway) in 1906. The university’s engineering building is named in her honour.
The bridge was built by Jons Civil Engineering firm in County Meath and was assembled off-site before being transported to Galway. Funding for the project was provided in full by the National Transport Authority and the European Regional Development Fund.
(Photo: Sheila Gallagher captured the city’s new pedestrian footbridge being raised on the south side of the Salmon Weir Bridge in December. It will officially open next Friday, May 26).
From the Galway City Tribune – Minister of State for Local Government and Planning, Kieran O’Donnell was labelled a “disgrace” for overturning councillors’ decisions to rezone land in the new City Development Plan.
Minister O’Donnell (pictured) confirmed in a letter to Council Chief Executive Brendan McGrath last week that he was reversing 25 material alternations made by councillors to the CDP 2023-29. He made the decision on the advice of Office of Planning Regulator (OPR).
Minister O’Donnell directed that 14 land parcels that were subject to land-use zoning changes by councillors as part of the Material Alterations to the Draft CDP should be reversed.
He directed that a further 11 land parcels in the city should become “unzoned”.
The Minister found that the CDP had not been made in a manner consistent with recommendations of the OPR, which required specific changes to the plan to ensure consistency with the national planning laws and guidelines.
At last week’s Council meeting Cllr Eddie Hoare (FG) asked for clarity on the process by which councillors could rezone the lands that had been changed by the Minister’s direction.
Cllr Declan McDonnell said, “What he [Minister O’Donnell] has done is an absolute disgrace”.
And he asked: “Do we have to have another development plan meeting to deal with it?”
Both Cllrs Hoare and McDonnell wondered what would become of the lands that were rezoned or unzoned by the ministerial direction.
Mr McGrath said the Council had put forward an argument in favour of retaining the material alterations in the plan, but ultimately the Minister sided with OPR.
He said if councillors want to make alterations to the new plan, they could go through the process of making a material alteration but this was lengthy.
The Save Roscam Peninsula campaign welcomed the Minister’s decision.
In a statement to the Galway City Tribune, it said the direction would mean the Roscam village area on the Roscam Peninsula will be unzoned and a number of land parcels would revert back to agriculture/high amenity.
A spokesperson for the campaign said: “the material alterations made by city councillors following lobbying by developers continued the long-standing practice of councillors facilitating a developer-led plan rather than an evidence- and policy-based plan that meets the needs of the city.
“The Minister’s direction is an important step in restoring confidence in the planning system. It is clear from the City Council’s own evidence on future housing projections that there was no requirement to zone these lands for residential purposes in order to meet the needs of the targeted population increase up to 2029,” the spokesperson added.
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