A master plan to redevelop Blackrock parklands can't proceed - because the council doesn't control all the land, writes Edel Morgan
A FORMER PD councillor is calling on Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council to acquire full legal title to Blackrock Park to prevent another "Dartmouth Square situation".
Victor Boyhan said he had been pursuing the issue of ownership of the park with the council since 1999 and last week received a memo from the council confirming it did not have full legal title to Blackrock Park.
The council this week confirmed that Pembroke Estates Management Ltd currently own the freehold of three of the nine plots of land that make up the parkland between Blackrock and Booterstown Dart stations.
One of these three plots is the main Blackrock Park, while the other plots are part of the larger parklands running along the seafront.
The council is considering a master plan to redevelop Blackrock parklands but Boyhan says that before any master plan can proceed, the council should acquire full ownership.
Pembroke Estates Management Ltd is controlled by estate agent Finnegan Menton, where director Iain Finnegan says there has been no approach from Dún Laoghaire Rathdown County Council to buy the remaining plots.
Blackrock Town Commissioners created the parklands by acquiring coastal properties and reclaiming the marshlands, known as sloblands, between the coast road and the railway line.
The nine plots of land that make up the park were acquired from seven different owners between 1870 and 1965.
The council has freehold title to six of the plots and holds a lease on the seventh which isn't due to expire until 2091. The lease on an eighth plot expired in 1943.
Regarding ownership of the ninth plot, Blackrock Park itself, a memo from the council's Economic Development and Planning Department says the Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery and Blackrock Township Commissioners agreed to build a public park on sloblands lying between Williamstown and Blackrock and bounded by the Dublin to Kingstown railway.
"It was agreed that following reclamation and construction of the park that a conveyance to the council would follow, and it appears this conveyance was not executed," says the memo.
Boyhan says the council needs to pursue full title to the lands to avoid a recurrence of the "Dartmouth Square situation" where in 2005 businessman Noel O'Gara bought the two-acre Dartmouth Square in Ranelagh for less than €10,000.
In June, Dublin City Council officials made O'Gara an offer of €300,000 to purchase the park but this was rejected by him as "an insult".
The council later issued a statement confirming that they would not be executing a CPO as it would cost too much money.
Since acquiring the land, O'Gara has had a number of injunctions brought against him to stop him running a car-park and a tile shop on the square.
In its memo to Boyhan, Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council says that "expert legal opinion is required" in relation to plots seven, eight and nine of Blackrock parklands "to clarify the legal options".
