Greystones Harbour

Greystones Harbour, originally uploaded by infomatique.

The "interim harbour" opened to the public last Saturday (November 5th).

This was to be a €300 million redevelopment scheme for the harbour, to be built by the Sispar consortium (Sispar is a joint venture consortium of Sisk and Park Developments) in a public-private partnership with Wicklow County Council. This has been and remains a major topical issue in the town. Objections revolved around the privatization of public beach front land without broad public agreement, but work started. The development was to include a new harbour, 341 apartments, a 230 berth marina, a new public plaza and facilities for local sporting clubs.

The town was divided on the granting of planning permision; 6,210 submissions were received by An Bord Pleanála on initial plans, of which more than 6,200 were objections. Many of the objections came from outside County Wicklow, according to a spokesman for Wicklow County Council. Many objected to specifics of the plan while approving the general idea. An oral hearing was held and the board requested the developers to make certain changes which resulted in the plans being scaled down by approximately 10%.

Some 3,700 objections were made on these updated plans. On 9 August 2007, the board approved the final plans, while imposing 13 conditions on construction works, including the retention of public access to the Cliff Walk during the development period, strict guidelines in relation to dust suppression, the re-use of demolition materials, and limitations on the hours of operation and noise levels. The board also over-ruled an earlier inspector's report, instead permitting an old unlicenced landfill to remain beside the new apartments.


The new breakwaters may increase the ongoing coastal erosion on the soft shorelines of the Greystones North beach area. In an effort to mitigate this, the developers will dump 12,000 tonnes of gravel each year on the beach in a process called "beach nourishment". Professor Andrew Cooper (University of Ulster) cautioned against beach nourishment at the second oral hearing.

In Feb 2010, it was announced that development of the marina would be paused indefinitely due to conditions in the Irish property market.

www.streetsofdublin.com