Locals oppose Tetrarch plans for Citywest graveyard

Plans by the owners of the Citywest Hotel complex in west Dublin for a €20 million, 8,047 burial plot cemetery are facing local opposition.

Last month, Tetrarch Capital’s Cape Wrath UC lodged plans with South Dublin County Council for a cemetery on the former golf course at Citywest Hotel.

The scheme also proposes columbarium walls, a reception building with seats for 60 guests and a 110-space car park.

Planning consultants for the scheme, Tom Phillips and Associates, have told the council that the cemetery “will provide a significant quantum of burial plots” serving the residential community in South Dublin.

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Associate Aoife McCarthy contends that the proposal “will provide a well designed reception building and landscaped cemetery at an appropriate location and scale, significantly enhancing the visual and ecological amenities of the site”.

However, Rathcoole Community Council has told the county council they “are concerned with the loss of a big portion of our neighbourhood’s designated green leisure space on the old Citywest Hotel golf course because of this development”.

On behalf of the community council, Alan Fairman stated that while it agrees that additional cemetery space will be required in time for west Dublin “there is no rationale provided as to why the amount of 8,047 plots was selected”.

Mr Fairman said that the proposal is “premature” and the community council is concerned that a significant amount of additional traffic congestion will result on the Saggart/Rathcoole access roads from locating a cemetery close to the Saggart/ Fortunestown Lane junction.

Colm McGrath, a Saggart resident, told the council that given the proposed cemetery’s location “immediately adjacent to arguably the biggest hotel in Europe, the proposed cemetery would represent an inexplicable underutilisation of a prime leisure/recreational asset”.

Mr McGrath said: “All in all, this proposal makes no sense unless it is a philanthropic gesture on the part of Cape Wrath.”

In another submission, the Saggart Village Residents’ Association told the council that it “cannot support this application without a better vision of how the future of Saggart will be planned”.

Plans by another Tetrarch entity for a cemetery, that includes 5,806 burial plots, in Howth, are also facing local opposition. Fingal County Council has sought further information on the proposal.

A decision on the planned Citywest cemetery is due next month.