Sir, – It seems very likely now that I will lose a large portion of my garden in the establishment of one of the main bus corridors through the city, under the new BusConnects plan.
It is not a development that I support, nor had any notice of before 2018. The plan envisages the most radical and wide-ranging alteration to the city in my lifetime.
I am furious that the process that has been adopted to implement this plan completely bypasses the infrastructure that ensures local democracy. What is the point of local government, with its in-built system of public representation, if the mechanism is abandoned when the most contentious alterations to our living environment are being foisted upon us?
The focus of the National Transport Authority is traffic movement; the focus of a local authority encompasses the broad range of considerations that impact on the lives of people in their communities. As a participant said at a recent meeting of the Lower Kimmage Road Residents’ Association, “We are a community not a corridor”.
Someone in high office is responsible for the removal of democracy (our rights) from this process, I would like that person to stand up and explain how it is that individuals’ rights can be put aside without consultation in the Ireland of 2018. – Yours, etc,
MICHAEL O’DEA,
Harold’s Cross,
Dublin 6W.