THE DUBLIN Port Company has told residents of Pigeon House Road that they should go to court if they want to put an end to sleep deprivation from the night-time operation of a container terminal near their homes.
The terminal, operated by Marine Terminals Ltd (MTL), bills itself as “Ireland’s largest and most modern container terminal” and was recently refitted with at a cost of €25 million. It has three gantry cranes capable of handling Panamax container vessels.
The gantries operate day and night, generating noise in the neighbourhood “significantly above the guideline values for community noise to avoid sleep disturbance . . . as recommended by the World Health Organisation”, according to noise consultants Fehily Timoney.
“We are at our wits end,” said Alexander Downes, a spokesman for 25 local residents, who range in age from six weeks to 86 years. “We have tried for years to work with Dublin Port to bring about a resolution to this matter, without success.”
Julie McCann (86), who had been living at Coastguard Station since 1943, moved out two years ago. “I could not stand the noise from the docks,” she said. “It seems to get worse at night. No sleep – my nerves were in bits listening to the crash of containers.”
Last May a report compiled by Byrne Environmental, for the residents, concluded that noise monitoring results “demonstrated that MTL site activities have a very significant detrimental impact . . . and that there is unambiguous evidence that noise complaints are justified”.
The Coastguard Station Residents Group claim that the three gantries were erected in 2002 by MTL without planning permission or a foreshore licence. “This means that the operational hours and excessive noise levels are unregulated without planning conditions.”
In a report commissioned by the residents, planning consultants Declan Brassil and Co said: “It is our opinion that works carried out in 2002 would not appear to be authorised under the provisions of a Harbour Works Order, made under the Harbours Act 1946.”
However, the seven-year period for bringing any enforcement action under the planning laws had now expired. This “does not have the effect of making any unauthorised development lawful” but merely rendered it “immune from enforcement or legal proceedings”.
Mr Downes said Dublin Port “played us along over the years and are aware that they have evaded on the seven-year planning rule”. Representations to local politicians had also failed to “end to this ongoing and appalling infringement of our rights”.
The residents group met port chief executive Eamonn O’Reilly last November to present him with its findings. “We offered him two options – either a cessation of night-time work outside our homes or rehouse the residents in the area,” the group said.
Savills estate agents subsequently valued the houses most affected. “We feel that it is a major issue for a small community to offer to leave their homes, particularity since some of the octogenarian members were born in their houses,” the group said.
“We felt the end was in sight,” it added. But Dublin Port had since “pulled back from this”, and Mr O’Reilly had told residents at a meeting on January 14th that the port “could not get a ‘capital return’ on the purchase of our homes and ‘we should go the court route’”.
The residents said it was now clear that Dublin Port, which has won two “good neighbour” awards for corporate social responsibility, had “no interest in resolving this matter [and] find an end to this . . . infringement of our right to a night’s sleep”.
Queries to Dublin Port were not answered and MTL – owned by the Peel Ports Group (formerly Mersey Docks and Harbour Company) – could not be contacted for comment.
