Sir, - The Dublin City Association of An Taisce wishes to record its disappointment - though not its surprise - at the decision by An Bord Pleanala to grant permission for a nine-storey tower at the back of the Front Lounge pub in Temple Bar.
This is part of a recent pattern in Dublin's City centre of breaching the unwritten height guidelines which have reigned for some time. An application is to be made, according to The Irish Times, for a 20-storey building on Sheriff Street. An application has been lodged by Zoe Developments for a 12-storey building beside Jervis Street Shopping Centre (whose excessive height has itself been the subject of several objections and an unsuccessful Bord Pleanala appeal from An Taisce). Zoe is already building 16 storeys in Ringsend. College Green is to be raised to seven storeys for our friends in AIB and Hilton International. And a nine-storey hotel is proposed for the corner of Moore and Parnell streets.
It is quite clear that Dublin Corporation does not have a policy on building heights.
Given the natural inclination of our planning authorities when faced with an application for 20 storeys to take terrible fright and grant permission for 18, An Taisce in Dublin City is determined to offer a principled stance by pursuing all city-centre developments of excessive height to a Bord Pleanala appeal.
This is not to say that we would object to strategically-planned, high-density, high-quality, highrise developments in brownfield sites such as Docklands, merely that we will be opposing incoherent boomtown-height depredations in the historic city centre which has for so long (with some well-documented exceptions) survived at a basic low level. - Yours, etc.,
Michael Smith, Chairman,
An Taisce Dublin City Association, Tailors Hall, Dublin 8.