Opponents to Trinity’s Dartry student blocks not ‘just upper-class twits’

Standing among the flowers and greenery of her homely back garden, Patricia Brewster-Willeke and her brother James point to the space where a proposed new block of student housing threatens to “overshadow” their homes.

Trinity College Dublin is applying to build rooms for a further 358 students in Trinity Hall, its off-campus accommodation in Dartry, Dublin 6, that houses 995 students.

The planned expansion would mean three additional blocks of housing, mainly four storeys high, with one block rising to six and eight storeys in parts.

While several residents along the nearby Temple Road objected to the plans over complaints of anti-social behaviour, Patricia and James say they're concerned their back gardens will be shut off from natural light.

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Much of the proposed new development would back on to a row of smaller homes on Temple Square, where Patricia and James – both Trinity alumni – live in two houses beside each other.

“We’re going to have a big tall building hanging over us and it’s going to block the light . . . It really would make an immense difference to quality of life,” says Patricia.

Local opposition to the expansion had been portrayed “like it’s just a bunch of upper class twits who don’t want any rowdy students around”, she says.

James, who has lived on the road for 33 years, did not object to the initial development at Trinity Hall in the early 2000s and had no complaints about his student neighbours. He is opposing the scale of the proposal which, he says, would mean an accommodation block “looming” over his back garden.

Trinity lodged the planning application to An Bord Pleanála earlier this year as a fast-tracked Strategic Housing Development. The planning board is to issue a decision in May.

Other residents have complained about anti-social behaviour, such as littered beer bottles and public urination. They blame students walking from the accommodation to Milltown Luas stop.

Victor Mahon, who bought his home on Temple Road in 1980, felt more student accommodation was “not suitable” for the area. “They don’t respect people living on the road . . . there’s enough there at the moment and adding to it they’re adding to a problem,” he says.

Resident complaints about people urinating in the street are “incredibly exaggerated”, says Niall Finnegan, a first-year law and French student living in Trinity Hall. “Out here on the path I’ve probably seen a broken bottle twice, I think there’s a bit of a desire to find something to object to,” he says.

Tom Molloy, Trinity’s director of public affairs, says students are being unfairly scapegoated. “Perhaps the odd bottle is left here or there, but that happens everywhere in Dublin, or any city,” he says.

The “lazy narrative” of misbehaving students had been shown up by the Covid-19 pandemic, says Mr Molloy.

“Overall, students were very well behaved, they obeyed the rules, at an age when the tendency is to want to mingle . . . students made a sacrifice knowing there was no benefit to them, but to protect older people,” he says.

Kennys’ resistance

James and Patricia Kenny, who live across from Trinity Hall, have been involved in protracted legal challenges opposing development on the site for much of the last 20 years.

Planning permission to build student accommodation was first granted back in 2000, which Mr Kenny challenged in the courts. Failing to halt the development, he instigated further challenges and appeals over the years, representing himself, which were unsuccessful.

A rare “Isaac Wunder” order, preventing him from bringing any fresh legal challenges against Trinity without the permission of the court was granted in 2006, but did not preclude him from pursuing or appealing existing cases.

The extensive court battles went as far as the Supreme Court and left Mr Kenny facing a bill of more than €660,000 to cover Trinity’s legal costs, which will be settled upon the sale of the elderly couple’s Dartry home after their deaths.

An Bord Pleanála had previously approved plans for the Trinity Hall expansion in August 2020. However, Ms Kenny took a legal case and last year succeeded in having the approval overturned at the High Court, leaving Trinity to restart the planning process.

Philip Kenny, the couple’s son, says his parents’ opposition to the development was about planning law. “They want whatever is done to comply with the law,” he says. He would not comment on whether they planned to take another legal case if the development is approved again.

This article was edited on Wednesday, March 30th, 2022