No money for Dundrum by-pass

Eugene Vesey, Principal Officer Parks & Environment, Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council, has confirmed to South Dublin Life & Leisure that additional funding is needed to complete the Dundrum by-pass.

Olivia Mitchell, T.D., Dublin South angrily said "I am both shocked and extremely annoyed by this revelation. There is no excuse for this bad planning and bad management. It is inexplicable that all the design work is done, tenders sought and the contract awarded and that the Council should now 'discover' that they have only half the money required to proceed."

"Neither the construction price nor the land acquisition costs can have come as a total surprise to management and yet apparently no approach was made to the Department until a couple of weeks ago to even indicate that additional funding would be necessary. It is vital that the Department now responds swiftly and positively to this request but this does not diminish the Council management's responsibility for the mishandling of this strategic part of the motorway infrastructure".

"The Dundrum by-pass is a vital approach road to the Southern Cross which will arrive in Dundrum next summer and unless the by-pass is in place by then, all of the motorway traffic will be disgorged onto the totally inadequate and already congested local road network. Every weeks delay now will add further to congestion next year

When asked to comment on Councillor Mitchell's al-legations of bad manage-ment, Eugene Vesey said "the Dundrum By-Pass is one of our most crucial projects. Funding does need to be clarified at this stage. When the original plans were made, we recognised that land purchase would be expensive. As we have progressed costs have gone up quite dramatically in a number of areas including land purchase and con-struction". Mr Vesey said there was no way provi-sions could have been made which would have accounted for the huge es-calation in costs but de-clined to say the exact amount of the shortfall. "We have made submis-sions to the Government for additional funding which we are optimistic about re-ceiving considering the im-portance of this project. We had a starting date es-timated at the beginning of August for the Dundrum By-Pass and at this point in time we still hope to meet this deadline" concluded Mr Vesey. When asked how much the County Council were requesting from the Government to finish the project Mr Vesey declined to comment.

On contacting the Minister's department South Dublin Life and Leisure were told that yes the Minister would confirm that a request had been re-ceived by his department from Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council for an additional amount to complete the Dundrum By-Pass but again would not divulge the amount re-quested, referring us back to Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council. "The original amount the Government sanctioned for this project", a spokesman for the Minister said was £10.5 million". An informed source has confirmed to South Dublin Life & leisure that an addi-tion sum in the region of £10 million is needed to complete the by-pass showing that the original estimate is a whopping 50% off target.

Grant of £31,400 to tackle litter prob-lem

The allocation of an anti-litter grant of £31,400 to Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council has been welcomed by Deputy Mary Hanafin T.D.

"This sizeable grant, allo-cated by the Department of the Environment, will be used for local projects in the Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown area, and I strongly believe that a real difference will be made" said the Minister. The Dun Laoghaire Deputy said she was especially happy with the specific type of grant that was being allocated to improve the litter situation in the borough. "I am de-lighted that this grant is di-rectly aimed at increasing public awareness and edu-cation people about litter. This really is the heart of the litter issue. All the money in the world will not keep our streets clean, un-less it is spent in the correct way, identifying the nature of the problem" she said.

"In the past I have called for a radical change in mentality towards the problem of Dublin's litter. A flippant approach to litter has manifested itself in re-cent decades among cer-tain elements of society and this must be adequately ad-dressed now, if we are to witness positive results on our streets, roads, and in our rivers. Education peo-ple and increasing public awareness are effective means of getting the mes-sage across" she stressed.

"I have firmly believed for some time that litter is the single most negative as-pect of Dublin's physical appearance. Litter's effects do not simply end when a piece of rubbish is picked up off the ground. In one sense, the crime has al-ready been committed and damage has already been done, in terms of the impact on our environment, our international reputation, and, consequently, our tourism industry" she added. "I am confident that Dun-Laoghaire Rathdown County Council will imme-diately put this latest anti-litter grant to its best possi-ble use throughout our lo-cality" concluded Minister Hanafin.

Sellafield - the cover-up continues

So said local County Councillor Eoin Costello who recently sent a petition to the UK Director General of Energy.

"Recent UK publications saw yet more articles con-cerning deliberate falsifi-cation of quality control data relating to material that was processed at Sellafield for export to Japan. This follows recent revelations concerning the falsification of safety at Sellafield nuclear repro-cessing plant, which led to the resignation of the direc-tor of the plant and other senior personnel".

"The reprocessing plant discharges low level ra-dioactive waste into the Irish sea all year round. The company denies that there is any link between the long-term radioactive emissions and the clusters of cancers identified by re-search in areas surrounding the reprocessing plant" said Councillor Costello. Continuing the Fine Gael Councillor stated " the revelations in April spurred me to make sure the British Government was aware that the citizens of Dun Laoghaire Rathdown do not want the Sellafield facility to continue its activities. I have now collected over 280 signatures for a petition demanding the closure of Sellafield. I am posting them today to Anna Walker, director general of energy at the Department of Trade and Industry. I would like to thank local schools for their help in or-ganising this petition".

According to Councillor Costello, Germany has now set an example that should be followed throughout Europe by firstly banning any shipments from Sellafield and secondly a commitment to wind down their nuclear industry over the next twenty years. The recent OSPAR meeting in Denmark passed a motion calling on BNFL to suspend reprocessing at Sellafield. According to Councillor Costello "The people of Dun Laoghaire Rathdown, particularly those with young children, want this threat to our country re-moved. I hope that Anna Walker will respond to our petition positively and take action to stop reprocessing at Sellafield"

Wheel 'em out

They are already stealthily taking over our streets. It's the green wheelie bin evolution, the latest initiative replacing the defunct Kerbside collection.

Launching Dun Laoghaire- Rathdown County Council's Green Wheelie Bin Recycling Service, in partnership with Oxigen Environmental Ltd, Cathaoirleach of Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council, Mary Elliott said " It gives me great pleasure to be here today to formally launch the first phase of Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council's green wheelie bin recycling ser-vice. Under the 'Waste Management-A Strategy for Dublin', a new door to door recycling service to replace the former Kerbside Collection Scheme is commencing soon in Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council's administrative area. This is part of the implementation of the objective to provide a household collection of dry recyclables to 80% of houses in the Dublin Region on a phased basis starting this summer".

Householders will be provided with a green wheelie bin for recycling purposes which will be collected every four weeks. The following ma-terials will be collected ini-tially-newspapers, maga-zines, light cardboard packaging, aluminium and steel cans.

A mobile recycling bring centre will resume at Our Lady of Good Counsel, Johnstown, Cabinteely on the 15th July and the ser-vice will be provided on the 3rd Saturday of each month from 10am to 12pm. A simi-lar service will resume at the Coach House carpark, Ballinteer from 22nd July and on the 4th Saturday of the every month from 10am to 12pm.

The wheelie bins made their debut on July 10th when delivery of the first bins to the 6,250 households in the Ballinteer / Dundrum areas began. The first col-lection will commence on August 14th and the service will be gradually extended to the surrounding areas of Churchtown/Clonskeagh later this year when a sec-ond route of 6,250 house-holds is added. "In all, some 12,500 houses will receive the service in the year 2000. This exceeds the 10,500 houses previ-ously served by Kerbside. In addition further routes will be added to the scheme over the next two years.

Concluding her speech at the launch of the recycling wheelie bins, Councillor Elliott said " I am launching the green wheelie bin re-cycling service today to strongly urge the people of Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown to make the effort to recy-cle regularly by using the green wheelie bin service. I am also asking the people of Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown to make regular use of recycling facilities provided by the resumed mobile recycling 'bring service' and the expanding network of bring centres throughout the country. Finally I would like to ac-knowledge with thanks the contribution made by the Environmental Services and Parks Department of Dun Laoghaire- Rathdown County Council and Oxigen Environmental Ltd in the provision of the green wheelie bin service.

Mitchell calls for changes in Trespass Law as Travellers invade second South Dublin School Grounds.

Dublin South Fine Gael Deputy, Olivia Mitchell TD called for a change in the law of trespass on Tuesday July 25th to force the trespasser rather than the owner to prove or disprove their right to be there. Deputy Mitchell's call comes following the occupation by travellers of the grounds adjoining Our Lady's Girls National School Ballinteer. This, said Olivia Mitchel, is the second school grounds in the South Dublin area in as many months to be invaded by travellers.

"With the arrival of travellers onto the grounds of a second school in South County Dublin, and with expensive court action the school's only legal means by which the travellers can be removed, it is becoming increasingly clear that the law must be changed to protect private property from trespass. The property owning public are largely unaware that the law fails to automatically protect them against trespass but rather puts the onus on the property owner to fund a costly civil case them-selves, if they want squat-ters to be ejected. This runs contrary to most people's concept of fair play under our justice system. One way to overcome this problem would be to change the law to place the onus on the trespasser to establish the right to tres-pass rather than obliging the land owner to prove the right to possession of his/her own property".

"The Board of Management of Ballinteer National School just does not have the £4,000 or £5,000 necessary to go to court to get an order to have the travellers re-moved. Earlier this sum-mer, St Benildus in Kilmacud was forced into court in a similar situation to ensure students doing their Leaving Certificate unimpeded access to the school said Deputy Mitchell." "Some land owners have chosen the less costly but highly questionable option of paying trespassers to leave their land" she con-tinued adding "public land has always been vulnerable but it is only in recent years, in tandem with the increased building on pub-lic land, that trespass on privately owned land has become a problem. "It's now time to change the law before the problem really escalates" concluded the Fine Gael Councillor.