Sir, – It was ironic that your report (“Gallery change to private house sought”, Home News, August 28th) on the saga surrounding the building described as the Donnelly Art Gallery at Vico Road, Killiney, came at the tail end of National Heritage Week. There can be few sadder legacies of the Celtic Tiger to be seen along the south coast of Dublin Bay. This building was inserted into one of our grandest, greenest urban coastlines with all the poise and delicacy of an elephant at a ballet class.
You give the floor area at 1,000sq m, which is ten times greater than the average suburban family home. Only some use such as a gallery could have been used to justify a building that was so large and out of scale. However, intrusion by a private house of that size was never capable of being justified on any planning grounds. The scenic coastline concerned is zoned as open space and it is accordingly highly prized for the views and amenity it offers to Dubliners looking for a bay-side excursion. There is certainly no case for retaining this building in any other function save something that would serve the community. If that opportunity has passed, then a different approach is needed.
We should not have been surprised to hear that the gallery use was not being pursued. Where were the visitors going to park? There is so little scope for disabled access and we now hear of concerns about sanitary capacity. Can Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council explain this catalogue of failures? It should now be prepared to accept its responsibility and provide a solution.
The proponents of this great carbuncle on the pretty face of Killiney are hardly going to sell its merits if they persist with the type of put-downs your report ascribes to them – that the locals “missed the point that the building itself and the grounds were the work of art and it was celebrating its emptiness”. When I saw those remarks I thought that part of the entertainment page had been accidentally shifted over to the news section.
This is a case that deserves fresh thinking. We should set out to remove the worst mistakes of the Celtic Tiger planning fiasco that brought such a disfigurement to the face of Ireland. This building should be acquired by the county council and then demolished in order to restore the pristine coastline that Dubliners are entitled to. There are, at the present time, many buildings in the wider area that could be put forward as a substitute for any household that needed a replacement.
If the council is looking for a precedent it might recall what happened directly across the bay at Red Rock, Sutton. There, a deal was struck about two decades ago with a private developer not to proceed with a housing development within a very scenic area and to accept instead an alternative site. Put simply, it was accepted by the council that an earlier planning permission should never have been granted and it was time to rectify the situation. That initiative was taken in the public interest and it kept open a significant stretch of green seaside much used by Dubliners.
I now urge the council to do the correct thing in order to prove to the wider public that the renewal of the planning system is proceeding in a meaningful way. – Yours, etc,