The Green Party has made a second appeal to An Bord Pleanála against plans to build apartments on a site adjoining the River Dodder in Dublin with the same zoning as St Stephen's Green.
The appeal was lodged before Christmas by Mr Eamon Ryan, Green Party TD for Dublin South and former Dublin city councillor, after the council's planners approved the scheme for an open green area called Scully's Field, near Milltown.
The latest plan is for 18 apartments in addition to an earlier plan by McGarrell Reilly Contractors for 92 units in four blocks, ranging in height from two to five storeys, which is under appeal by four other members of the Green Party.
This was made by two former city councillors, Ms Claire Wheeler and Mr Ryan Meade, together with Cllr Ciarán Fallon, a member of DúLaoghaire-Rathdown County Council, and the party's president, Mr John Gormley, who is the party's local TD.
"This is an important case because the city council's planners have completely ignored the Z9 zoning and the wishes of local councillors," Mr Gormley said. Under Z9, the zoning objective aims "to preserve, provide and improve recreational amenity and open space".
In his appeal, Mr Ryan said his opposition to the development was based on his experience as a councillor for the Rathmines ward between 1998 and 2002, when the city council voted on a number of occasions against plans to breach the zoning.
He had received assurances that Z9 would exclude any large-scale residential or office development on the site.
A year later, however, the developer put forward an outline proposal and the planners suggested that the zoning might allow for such plans.
The planner's report noted that the developers were proposing to cede 70 per cent of the five-acre site as public open space for the benefit of the city as an addition to the Dodder linear park, and said this "accords with the overall zoning objective".
But Mr Ryan said: "Councillors from every political party were, and still are, united in opposition to the type of development that is being proposed. The council has always set out a consistent and explicit desire for the lands in question to be maintained.
"The need to maintain the narrow strip of lands along the Dodder as linear green spaces for the rapidly developing southside suburbs is, I believe, an objective of strategic importance for the whole city. . . Removing it would be a dreadful and irreversible mistake," he said.
He said that permitting it to proceed "would undermine the very basis upon which our development plan and zoning system works".
