The Friday View 25/02
Tree felling, 241 vacant council houses in Cork county, Port of Cork paintings at the Crawford Art Gallery, and more.
Ellie writes…..trouble in Treeland again
Tree felling in several areas of the city have been causing consternation yet again. UCC tree expert Dr Eoin Lettice, who I interviewed for my “Who Speaks for Cork Trees?” Long Read this time last year, has started a #CorkMissingTrees hashtag on Twitter for social media users to report instances of felling.
Responses have been numerous and this issue is not going away.
Green Party Councillor Dan Boyle has said he’ll take a list to city hall to discuss, but his colleague Cllr Oliver Moran pointed out, as he did to me last year, that on public land, the council can be persuaded to change tack on trees, but when fellings are on private land, trees have very weak protection indeed.
Glanmire and the OPW
A reader had been in touch about felling connected to the upcoming Glashaboy flood defence scheme in Glanmire. So I went for a look. A contractor for the Glashaboy scheme is expected to be appointed “in Q1 of this year,” the OPW press officer told me.
The scheme of “walls and embankments, culvert upgrades, channel widening and road re-grading” will take 32 months once started and yes, recent rounds of tree-felling along the riverbank are clearance related to the works, even though some of the trees felled at Hazelwood are nowhere near the river and were actually located along the roadside boundary of the “circus field.”
“Every effort has been made to minimise the impact and an ecologist will be on site monitoring the works,” the OPW press officer told me in an email. “As part of the wider flood relief project, native tree species will be planted and an extensive hedgerow and wildflower planting programme is also planned to further enhance biodiversity. The OPW and Cork City Council will also work with the local community to identify further opportunities for tree planting and biodiversity enhancement in the area.”
We’re going to be pursuing a further angle to tree-felling in Cork with a story that we are currently gathering information for. As ever, readers getting in touch with information is very helpful to us.
214 Vacant Council Houses in Cork County in 2021
214 local authority houses lay vacant in Cork county on the the last day of 2021, Cork County Council have confirmed.
146 council voids were made ready for re-letting during 2021.
North Cork had the highest number of council houses lying vacant, with 87 council-owned homes vacant at the end of the year, according to a recent report by the housing directorate.
845 applicants received a social housing allocation in Cork County in 2021, up from 733 in 2020.
9 houses were acquired for the council’s Buy & Renew scheme in 2021 compared to 37 in 2020.
46 families with children were living in emergency accommodation in Cork and Kerry in mid-2021, according to the Focus on Homelessness report.
New Plaza for Watergrasshill
A new area for outdoor community events has been opened in Watergrasshill. Funded by Cork County Council and the National Transport Authority, the new plaza has been a joint project between the Council and Watergrasshill Community Association.
Out + About
🖼 Go Sea: maritime paintings in the Crawford
The Port of Cork collection of maritime paintings, including works by George Mounsey Wheatley Atkinson (1806-1884), Henry Albert Hartland (1840-1893), Robert Lowe Stopford (1813-1898), and Seán Keating (1889-1977), was donated to the Crawford Art Gallery by the Port of Cork authority in preparation for their former HQ becoming the lobby of a five star hotel.
The Port of Cork Collection runs from 26 February until August 28 on the top floor of the Crawford Art Gallery, Cork.
The Long Read
What legacy will SHDs, the controversial fast-tracked system of Strategic Housing Developments that drew to an end in December 2021, leave behind in Cork city and county? Plentiful, affordable housing with a good quality of life, or isolated sprawls of developments with eye-watering price-tags?
This week, Ellie visits Glounthaune in Cork county and Ballinglanna, within the city bounds in Glanmire, to report. At Ballinglanna, the asking price for a 3-bed semi at the time of sale in 2019 was €345,000, but one of these homes is advertised on Daft with a price tag of €365,000 just over two years later.
The SHD story may not the most glamorous story, but the impacts of planning for large housing developments, sometimes of up to 600 new homes, are big.
