Councillor slams 'windowless' room as no substitute for North Inner City pitch
As the North Inner City continues to lose vital green spaces for young people, Social Democrats Councillor Daniel Ennis stresses that “an apartment with no windows done up as a community centre” is not sufficient for the area’s youth.
At Wednesday's Central Area Committee meeting, Cllr Ennis called for “an immediate halt to the removal or reduction of play spaces and sports pitches” in the North Inner City. Citing Dublin City Council’s plans for a new housing development at the Multi-Use Games Area known locally as the Strand in Portland Row as a prime example of essential facilities being eroded, he stressed the need to provide for young people.
“We need housing, it’s the biggest crisis our country faces, but there needs to be more planning done because if the North Inner City tells us anything, it’s a history of bad planning,” he said. “What we’re seeing going into new developments is just hopes and gestures, they are not play spaces, they are community centres.”
Rather than providing young people with outdoor areas for sports and activities, Cllr Ennis said rooms no bigger than an apartment are being repurposed as community centres. He stated there is even a youth club in the North Inner City operating out of a kitchen.
“At Portland Row, we’re being accused of blocking housing on that site, when right across the road, a stone’s throw away, there's been a vacant derelict site for the last how many years, it’s ridiculous, they’re pitting us against each other,” he said.
With vacancy and dereliction being a “blight on the area,” Cllr Ennis said he fails to understand why play spaces would be taken away for use as housing. As an area known “locally, nationally and internationally as the Golden Mile” he called out the hypocrisy of praising athletes like Kellie Harrington and Troy Parrott while simultaneously taking away the pitch they played on growing up.
“What are we doing as a Central Area, as a local authority?” he asked. “We’re letting ourselves down, shooting ourselves in the foot, and letting our communities down by taking this away.”
Cllr Ennis’s motion saw widespread support from fellow councillors with Sinn Fein Cllr Janice Boylan stressing the urgent need to provide young people with outdoor spaces. “We saw with Covid when kids weren’t in school they didn’t have the social skills because they were in the house all the time,” she said.
She stressed that, without essential outdoor play spaces, children will have “problems as adults” and that to take them away is “not addressing the elephant in the room.” “We really need to get out and act together,” she said.
Cllr Nial Ring pointed out the vast disparity between green spaces in the North Inner City and other areas. He calculated that there’s just 1.64 square metres of green space in the North Inner City per person, when the average across Dublin is 47 square metres per person. “The North Inner City is being discriminated against, all we want is equality,” he said.
Growing up in flat complexes in Dublin, Cllr Christy Burke said “we used to have a bedsit as a community centre” and expressed his shock that “we haven’t moved on from that.” Fine Gael Cllr Gayle Ralph stressed that “pitches are not luxuries” and that it’s essential to provide a place where “children grow, friendships form, and children come together.”
“This motion rightly points out that generations have benefitted from these spaces and some great people have come out of there. We have a responsibility to ensure the same opportunities for the next generation,” she said.
Cllr Ennis’s motion also called for the council to “urgently review its current policies and practices regarding play and sports facilities in Dublin 1 and 3, and to prioritise the protection, retention, and expansion of these spaces to ensure that young people and the wider community are properly served now and into the future.”
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