Green Party councillor, Deirdre de Burca, has recently expressed her concern that the interests of developers rather than those of the wider public are deciding the future location of the Luas line.

De Burca expressed her concerns after attending the Public Consultation Day on the extension of the Luas line from Cherrywood to the Bray Area. The Public Consultation was hosted by the Railway Procurement Agency and held in the Royal Hotel on Wed 13th September.

The Green Party councillor says she spoke at length to representatives from the Railway Procurement Agency during the public consultation and asked them to explain why the proposed extension of the Luas line was by-passing the town of Bray completely, including the new 2 billion Town Centre development.

“I asked the RPA to explain why the Luas line was avoiding the densely populated town of Bray, which is connected by rail to the growing population centres of Greystones, Wicklow Town and Arklow” says de Burca. “I also expressed my amazement that the Luas line was going instead out to Fassaroe which is undeveloped at present. Future projections of population levels at Fassaroe are approximately 20,000 people. And yet the town of Bray has an existing population of 35,000 people or so, and the Bray Golf Club lands development has the potential to almost double this”.

De Burca says that the representatives of the Railway Procurement Agency informed her that the extended Luas line from Cherrywood was going to Fassaroe instead of Bray Golf Club Lands because the developers at Fassaroe wanted it and the developers of the Golf Club Lands didn’t. “The RPA officials told me that land use planning was the responsibility of county councils and that Wicklow County Council and Bray Town Council had chosen Fassaroe at the destination for the extended Luas line” she says.

According to de Burca this makes absolutely no planning sense, particularly as public transport lines are supposed to serve high density population centres, rather than peripheral locations such as Fassaroe. “Once again Bray is getting a very poor deal from its politicians and local councillors” says de Burca. “They seem more interested in facilitating the very wealthy Cosgrove Brothers who own the lands at Fassaroe, than serving the people of Wicklow who elect them”.

The Green Party councillor says that the Luas is likely to be converted to a Metro line in the future. “If the Luas line was extended to the town of Bray and a new station built on the Bray Golf Club Lands, the population of Bray and the East Coast could access Dublin Airport in the future in one Metro journey” she says. “Fassaroe is the wrong place to put the Luas line, even if it causes the value of the land there to appreciate hugely in value. Councillors and officials should be thinking about what is in the best interests of the greatest number of people in the future, rather than pandering to the interests of a small number of wealthy developers”.