SaveAirfield Meeting – 7^th April, 2005.

 

 

Around 400 people crowded into Taney Parish Hall on 7^th April to attend a meeting organised in connection with the proposed Dundrum/Sandyford Link Road.  4 TDs – Eamon Ryan, Olivia Mitchell, Liz O’Donnell and Tom Kitt – attended in addition to several local councillors.  Eamon Ryan TD chaired the meeting and outlined plans for the road, which appears to be badly engineered.  He also made proposals that would alleviate the traffic congestion in Sandyford Industrial Estate without resorting to the Link Road.  Presentations were made on behalf of Balally Residents’ Association (John O’Hanlon), Holywell Residents’ Associations (Brendan Roantree) and SaveAirfield Campaign (Rose Mary Logue).*   All political representatives present also spoke and expressed opinions against the road going ahead, with some reservations.  They all agreed that Airfield must be saved.   We are extremely grateful to the Green Party who kindly offered to organise this meeting and to Eamon Ryan for chairing it.

* see below text of RML’s speech.

 

 The following resolution was proposed and passed (with one dissenting voice):

 

 

 

 

Presentation by Rose Mary Logue, SaveAirfield Campaign

 

 

It is over a year since Angela and I spoke to you at the first SaveAirfield meeting.  A lot of good things have happened in the meantime:  Councillors decided in the early hours of 24^th March 2004 to zone most of the estate “Open Space”;  Dudley’s Field was saved;  there is a new General Manager at Airfield who has put together a great programme of events at the House.  I’ve been up on a couple of the evenings devoted to Sustainability.  The common theme on the two evenings was that we are shortly going to reach the peak of oil production and it will then drop off sharply.  It’s going to have an impact on our lives – maybe not so much on us who can remember how many pence there were in a shilling.  But your children’s and especially your grandchildren’s lives are going to be radically different.  Fuel cells, wind energy, nuclear energy will all be considered for the future:  but, even with them, there will be an end to the type of long-distance travel we undertake so blithely now.  What we eat may have to be grown locally, as when I was a child.  There will be no need for many of the roads that criss-cross Dundrum.  There will be no need for the Sandyford Link Road.  This may happen in 50 years time.

 

I was rather surprised that Airfield was hosting this excellent series on Sustainability when last year it was promoting a plan that would have been predicated on large numbers of people coming long distances by car.  Maybe the plan is torn up – I hope so.

 

We need to take a long view here.  Airfield is a 35-acre farm of wonderful fertile loamy soil.  The hedgerows and field patterns are hundreds of years old.  It could grow wheat, as a market garden it could feed thousands of people.  With a dairy herd it could be producing 2,500 litres of milk a day.  It is the last urban farm in Dublin – perhaps at the moment not farmed as intensively as it might be.  But provided the land is kept in good heart (and it is) the potential is there.  Can we estimate the effect on the children who visit to see the annual miracle of the lambs now arriving, or those who come with their classes to learn about farming and growing?  As it is, Airfield land is an amazing treasury – each cubic metre of soil is host to up to 250 earthworms, an acre of mature trees there will absorb up to 5 tonnes of C02:  there are birds, foxes and squirrels.  One of the Development Plan’s objectives is to preserve wildlife corridors and biodiversity – the southern boundary which the Council now proposes to demolish is one of the last wildlife corridors on the estate. 

 

The old people used to say “the land does many people”, recognising that they were only stewards who passed it on to the next generation – but that will not happen if roads are built over it.  Let us take the long view – let us think of 100 years’ time, or 200.  Airfield has already given too much.  The coffers of Dun Laoghaire Rathdown are brimming nicely, thanks to the County Manager.  He and the councillors have done a great job of turning the Council’s finances around in recent years.  But, let them not be greedy.   Around 5,000 apartments are in development in the area spanned by Beech Hill, Leopardstown and Edmondstown.  They apparently get €20,000 for each one built.  Do your own sums.  They do not need this road to facilitate the building of more, they do not need development on Airfield land.

 

Many of you are here this evening because you want to save Airfield.  Your presence here will help to do that.  We want you to send in submissions to the Council before the vote on the road takes place – that will sway the minds of the people who will decide. We want you to make contact with your councillors and TDs.  But you can also help to save Airfield in other ways – get the brochure, attend the events, eat at the restaurant, hire rooms for your club or association, host your kids’ birthday parties there, take out an annual subscription, support the shop.  Best of all (if you can at all) walk there, take a bus, take the Luas – let the trustees see that Airfield can be economically viable getting support from the local area, without extra car-parks, without any major restructuring.  Airfield must not be allowed to fail.  Airfield as a thriving, bustling, successful centre of the community can never be built over.  Do not allow people to say “Airfield is not viable”.

 

It was the dying wish of Miss Letitia and Miss Naomi Overend that the house and land at Airfield would be preserved.  They did not leave it to public ownership but in the care of trustees, who are the legal owners.   The trust structure is rather complicated, so I will not go into it here, but details are available on our new website www.SaveAirfield.com .     

 

Angela and I hope the day will come when Airfield is protected in perpetuity.  We don’t want to have to come back here year after year (although we will do it if necessary).   Are there plans to tear down the railings around St. Stephen’s Green to widen the road? – No!  Is a feasibility study being carried out for apartment blocks in the Phoenix Park? – No!  Enough has already been lost at Airfield – it is unthinkable to us that another sod should go.  We look to the day when trustees, politicians and planners will unite in ensuring that nothing will happen at Airfield that Miss Letitia and Miss Naomi would not endorse.  We ask for a little imagination.

 

Never have ordinary people in the locality been so united - united in their wish that not another inch of ground, not another tree, branch, hedgerow or bird be lost.  It is their wish that Airfield be sacrosanct, as was the wish of Miss Letitia and Miss Naomi Overend.   Perhaps I am a dreamer – but it can be so.   It will happen if that is our will.