Further to our notice/email on 15th February, the Terenure Residents' Association, in conjunction with the Association of Residents of Terenure and the Terenure West Residents' Association, are jointly submitting the following observation to Dublin City Council in regard to the proposed development at the old Rathdown Motors site at the junction of Templeogue Road and Terenure Road West.
You may wish to submit your own observation, although this must be done by 5pm on 12th March. There is a fee of €20, and details on how to submit an observation can be found here.
You are welcome to use any of the points made below, although wholesale "cut and pasting" may lead to your observation being deemed a duplicate and disregarded.
Dublin City Council
Planning Section
Wood Quay
Dublin 8
WEB1250/26 Templeogue Road and Terenure Road West
Dear Planning Section
The undersigned residents associations Terenure Residents Association (TRA), Terenure West Residents Association (TWRA), and the Association of Residents of Terenure (ART) represent an area of over 1,500 houses adjacent to the proposed development site. We wish to make observations on the proposed development.
We might firstly say that we all recognize the need for more housing in areas such as Terenure. However consistently in the Terenure area developers propose excessive schemes with too many units occupying too small a site, ignore infrastructure issues which don't suit their purpose and submit self serving (and often inaccurate) reports which ignore obvious problems with the development proposed. Unfortunately this is very much the case with this application. While we all agree that the provision of some housing on this site is not something to which we would take exception, any proposal needs to properly recognise the visual impact of the site, the excessive congestion around Terenure Cross and the realities around the BusConnects proposals including the excellent level of services proposed for Terenure. This application fails to do this and should go back to the drawing board or at the least ought to be modified.
Our observations relate to
1 the visual impact of the site
2 the failure of the proposal to retain an important aspect of Terenure's history
3 the incompatability of the scheme with the Bus Connects adjacent corridor
4 the provision of car parking with exits and entrances "turn right only"
5 the excessive scale of the development
6 the current level of development in Terenure
1) Visual impact of the site
This site is probably the most visible site in Terenure. It can be readily seen when travelling in a west bound direction from approximately where Brighton Road joins Terenure Road East, more than 0.5km from the site. As one gets closer to the site, the area is bounded to the left by the elegant branch of Bank of Ireland (corner Rathfarnham Road and Terenure Place) and to the right by a red brick building occupied by Cronin accountants (corner of Terenure Place and Terenure Road North), which could properly be described as heritage buildings. These buildings are shown in photomontages 11 to 13 of Visual Assessment Report Part 1. We believe there has been use of perspective here to give the impression that the building is lower than the two heritage buildings.
It is our very strong opinion that the proposed four story red brick building with the extra black storey on the top is wholly out of character with the streetscape and is simply not an acceptable finish for a building in such a strategically visible location. We believe the council should insist on a finish in sympathy with the existing architecture adjacent to the site and on a building that does not exceed the height of the adjacent commercial buildings.
If it is the case that a much needed maternity hospital extension at Parnell Square can be denied permission by reason of visual impact, it would seem to follow that a relatively small scale development in a visually sensitive heritage location should also be refused.
Indeed nothing has really happened in almost seven years to address a reason for refusal in the application 4702/18 refused 21 February 2019 namely that "by reason of its overall scale, height, bulk and massing will be visually intrusive and overbearing when viewed on approach from the west along Terenure Road West and Templeogue Road and from the east along Terenure Place" and that "the corner treatment to Terenure Place fails to provide an adequate statement design response necessitated by this prominent location". For ourselves we are not sure that the visual offence from Terenure Road West is so material, but the building is rather ugly and obtrusive from Templeogue Road and extremely offensive when viewed from Terenure Cross.
2) Terenure's heritage
Terenure was in times past referred to as Roundtown. This is apparently because there was a circle of houses around the current three way junction at the site. There is within the site some of this circle as is evident from page 13 of Visual Assessment Report Part 2. We believe that in no circumstances should the demolition of these buildings be allowed. We don't think this is really addressed in the numerous documents submitted.
3) Incompatability with Bus Connects
As is acknowledged in the application, there is going to be an inbound bus corridor operating 6am to 8pm seven days a week on the Templeogue Road frontage of the property. This is not technically a bus corridor but rather a plan to minimise traffic on Templeogue Road by "artificially" dividing Templeogue Road inbound in two by a " bus gate bar" near Terenure Library. We believe this corridor will have relatively little bus traffic. However the full road remains available to taxis and more importantly to bicycles and in the aggregate we believe that there will be more than enough traffic between those two categories to create a consistent flow and that traffic exiting right from the development will be hazardous to that traffic.
We also doubt the practical effectiveness of a left turn ban ex the site. Many places are very difficult to reach if a resident is forced to turn right and that increases temptation. The plans do not explain how this will be enforced and we strongly suspect that exiting traffic will ignore the ban and join the bus lane. We think the council needs to ask the developer to explain how the ban is to be enforced. BusConnects in other adjacent contexts where they propose controversial turn bans effectively wash their hands on the enforcement issue. This is a feckless and irresponsible approach by a public authority, given that turn bans need to be enforced (but not against genuine residents) if the scheme is to work.
The Bus Connects scheme recognizes that short of considerable demolition, it cannot also achieve an outbound bus lane on Templeogue Road. The outbound lane gets backed up a little further out. The partial solution to this are schemes to try and reduce the input into Terenure Place, most notably outbound restrictions on Rathgar Road. It makes no sense whatever that a very small scale housing scheme should potentially cause outbound traffic to back up on Terenure Place while held up behind one car trying to turn right at a time when the combination of traffic inbound on Templeogue Road makes it difficult to turn right immediately.
We would indeed suggest that it would be far less damaging to a very expensive infrastructure project costing the taxpayer millions to have left turn only into and out of the site.
We wholly disagree with the conclusion by the traffic experts that right turning traffic will cause no issues here and we would submit that we have a far better knowledge of the actuality of traffic in Terenure than a firm of traffic consultants. We also believe that the traffic counts given in the traffic report are not consistent with the traffic volumes forecast for BusConnects and that you the authority need to look closely at this issue.
4) Parking generally
This development is very close indeed to a number of bus routes when the full BusConnects is in place. Across the road or outside on Terenure Road West will be the frequent S4, 74 and 81 (replacing 15A). Immediately the other side of Terenure Cross will be the frequent A2 and the A1 and A3 will be outside the development. Terenure Road North will have the 85 bus (replacing 16).The traffic experts have erroneously stated that the A4 will be adjacent to the site and have supplied a wrong map. The A4 will operate via Bushy Park Road. Indeed they seem in page 35 of their report with the wrong map to think that the development is in Kilmainham as they draw their yellow box there.
We would submit that there are an excessive number of car parking spaces being provided. It is surely the case that the council should be trying to force new residents to use bicycles or bus and the provision of 20 spaces seems to encourage the least optimal mode of transport. Many residential properties in Terenure Village do not have parking and this development should obviously be dealt with in the same way. If we are ever to get people to use the bus, surely a development in an urban village with no parking is the way to go.
We are aware of and understand concerns of immediate nieghbours about further pressure on existing on street parking. As this is predominantly paid, this might not be so great a problem as long as anyone in these blocks is not entitled to a residents parking concession.
For reasons outlined above we think it is not a good idea to have an exit on Templeogue Road. The elimination or severe reduction of parking would minimise this issue. The right turn only is illogical.
We do not like the idea of a service area on Terenure Road West. The traffic report does not seem to take account of recent alterations; it is not part of the photo in paragraph 2.4 and the place the lorry is parked is now part of the pavement. These are school safety measures and it makes no sense to have invested in these in Autumn 2025 and now turn round to allow a service area. We don't think its clear from the application where the service area is but the changes associated with school safety may render it unachievable. We think the service area should not be allowed as traffic pulling in and out on that road is a traffic hazard.
5) Excessive scale
We think that 45 apartments on this site is an excessive scale of development. We believe that the number should be significantly reduced. The three storey block in the centre with 9 units is arguably acceptable and certainly the reduction of the road fronting block to three storeys would render the development more palatable and address the visual issues to some extent.
We note that there is no provision whatever for three bed units. We think there is a case to be made for there to be three beds in the mix.
6) Current level of development in Terenure
We believe that there seems to be a policy being applied to Terenure that pretty well every available site should be covered in apartments by developers and the number of developments is becoming excessive. We believe it is fundamentally wrong in planning terms not to keep sites available for other purposes. Other observers have noted the numerous permissions already in the pipeline such as a large development at Fortfield Road and smaller developments at Templeogue Road and Rathfarnham Road (the synagogue site) and a number of others. We don't think continual disruption of the community is a proper approach to planning in an area where substantial numbers of homes are already in the pipeline.
Your fee of €20 is being paid by parallel arrangements.
for ART (Association of Residents of Terenure)
for Terenure Residents Association
for Terenure West Residents Association