Just weeks after it opened, Dún Laoghaire Baths has been struck by another difficulty: the problems that users of wheelchairs and other mobility devices are having on long, steep ramps at the long-delayed development.
A video posted on social media by the disability group Access for All Ireland shows Sean O’Kelly, a wheelchair user in the south Co Dublin town, attempting to visit the baths. But the access ramp, which features a notice that reads “Caution: Steep slope”, is impossible for him to use.
Access for All has been “inundated with messages about the new baths out in #DunLaoghaire and the fact the ramps out there are mountainous”. The organisation adds: “You can see from these photos this is a nightmare for our mobility-impaired community and for such a beautiful place to exclude us is unacceptable.”
The baths, which first opened in 1843 and then closed to the public in 1997, reopened on December 13th, 2022. Redeveloped by Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council in an €18 million project, the complex is now a fine public-realm space. Although, somewhat controversially, Dún Laoghaire Baths doesn’t yet include any baths, it does feature a series of walkways and stopping points at different levels, a jetty, an amphitheatre by the sea, and a gorgeously restored pavilion. But the accessibility issue has dismayed many.
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In a letter to The Irish Times last week another Dún Laoghaire resident, Aaron Daly, wrote that “there’s a lot of disappointment from the local disability community. Not only is the much-needed changing places toilet facility not open right now but wheelchair-users find themselves excluded from parts of the development due to the long, steep ramps and restricted viewing.”
[ Inside the new Dún Laoghaire Baths (spoiler: don’t expect baths)Opens in new window ]
At January’s Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council meeting, local representatives questioned the organisation’s executive about the problems. Melissa Halpin, a People Before Profit councillor who was part of the Save Our Seafront campaign that was key in retaining the baths as a public amenity, said the lack of accessibility “certainly came as a shock to me”. She said she had been contacted by Access for All; Sean O’Kelly; Sophia Mulvany, “a vocal and active wheelchair-user”, and her father, Bernard; and the wheelchair user Graham Merrigan. “It really should come as a salutary lesson to all of us to be more careful and more aware,” Halpin said.
How could the accessibility problem have arisen in such a careful, thoughtful project that was long in the planning and even longer in the execution?
That point seems to be the nub of it. The baths were derelict and the site problematic, and an unlucky confluence of circumstances meant the development was more complicated than predicted. Plans unveiled in March 2015 took nearly eight years to be brought to fruition with the December reopening, which is just the first phase of a larger project.
“Because of the complexity of the overall project it was divided into two phases, with the upgrading of the walkways being postponed to the second phase,” a council spokesperson says. While “the street level and the mid-level areas are fully accessible, and comply with Part M” regulations for disability access, “the lower level is not fully accessible yet ... A temporary ramp has been put in place to provide some level of access to this area”.
The senior Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council architect who steered the project, Bob Hannan, confirms that the plan is for the ramps accessing the lowest level of the complex – those highlighted by the Access for All Ireland video – to be upgraded with the site’s other footpaths and walkways, which are in poor order and need significant repair. He points out that it is a steep site, with a large drop in level from the street to the sea. Only once the gentler ramps are in place, as part of the second phase, will the complex have a full disability-access route. “This is how these projects sometimes roll out.”
The two-phase nature of the project was known before the first contracts were agreed, Hannan says, and the council’s disability-access group was involved in the plans. But the project went on so long that “people don’t necessarily remember everything”.
The council representative points out that “dividing the project into two phases has allowed some of the facilities to be opened to the public much faster than if the entire project had been developed as a single parcel of work, but with the drawback that the site isn’t currently as accessible for all as we would like it to be”. Planning permission is in place, tender documents are being prepared and, they say, it is “a priority project for the council”.
“We expect to see contractors on site, working on this phase, later in 2023.″
Hannan, the senior council architect, says the walkway to the East Pier will be finished this year, and will provide access down to the sea for all.
[ Dún Laoghaire Baths finally reopen: ‘We’re here courtesy of people power’Opens in new window ]
This month’s council meeting unanimously passed three motions, calling for emergency, “permanent or temporary” works to address accessibility on the lower-level ramp; for disability representatives and campaigners to be invited to all council public-infrastructure projects in advance of opening; and for council management to expedite phase two. A report will be presented to councillors at their February 13th meeting.
In the meantime, the council is in the final stage of awarding the contract to run the cafe, which will be part of the pavilion; the building will also house artists’ studios and changing facilities for people with severe disabilities, as well as a lift from street level to mid-level, increasing accessibility. Hannan says he expects the pavilion and its facilities to open in the spring. (While the policy objective is to include a pool in a further phase, there are no commitments to this yet, he adds.)
Even at this coldest time of the year, Dún Laoghaire Baths is being well used by walkers, sea swimmers and rollerskaters. By the summer, with the cafe open and the upgrading of the paths under way, Hannan says: “It will come into its own.”
