Tag Archives: councillors

Cork City Council response to an FOI request

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Date 09th May 2013

Re;     Freedom of Information Request 16/13

I refer to your request received under the Freedom of Information Acts 1997 and 2003, to access the following information:

“ Relating to the development of the Marina Park and the proposed sale/handover of land, including the land known as the Showgrounds and Marina Hall, to the GAA & Cork County Board for the redevelopment of Pairc Ui Chaoimh Stadium and the establishment of a “Centre of Excellence”.

1) All minutes, record notes (formal and informal), e-mails, diary entries and other documents relating to meetings between Cork City Council representatives and/or their agents, GAA representatives and/or their agents, Cork County Board representatives and/or their agents.

2) All minutes, record notes (formal and informal), e-mails, diary entries and other documents relating to that included any or all of the following organisations, companies, their representatives and/or their agents: Redscape, OKRA, O’Connor Sutton Cronin (engineers), Venhoeven CS (architects), Howley Hayes (conservation architects), Fehily Timoney (environment and ecology), Modus Operandi (art consultants), and Davis Langdon PKS (quantity surveyors) or any other members of the Marina Park design team.

3) All minutes of meetings that included any or all of the following organisations, companies, their representatives and/or their agents: Malachy Walsh & Partners, Consulting Engineers and Scott Tallon Walker Architects or any other members of the Pairc Ui Chaoimh redevelopment team”

Decision

A decision has been made to part grant your request.

I attach  copies of the relevant documentation.

If you have any queries regarding this correspondence you can contact me at 021-4924037.

1) All minutes, record notes (formal and informal), e-mails, diary entries and other documents relating to meetings between Cork City Council representatives and/or their agents, GAA representatives and/or their agents, Cork County Board representatives and/or their agents.

This information is refused  under

Section 27(1)(b) and (c) Commercially Sensitive Information

27. (1) Subject to subsection (2), a head shall refuse to grant a request under
section 7 if the record concerned contains

 (b) financial, commercial, scientific or technical or other information whose disclosure could reasonably be expected to result in a material financial loss or gain to the person to whom the information relates, or could prejudice the competitive position of that person in the conduct of his or her profession or business or otherwise in his or her occupation, or

(c) information whose disclosure could prejudice the conduct or outcome of contractual or other negotiations of the person to whom the information relates.

Section 20(1) Deliberations of Public Bodies

20. (1) A head may refuse to grant a request under section 7 if the record concerned contains matter relating to the deliberative processes of a public body (including opinions, advice, recommendations, and the results of consultations, considered by the body, the head of the body, or a member of the body or of the staff of the body for the purpose of those processes).

and Section 21(1)(c) Functions and Negotiations of Public Bodies.

21.(1) A head may refuse to grant a request under section 7 if access to the record concerned could, in the opinion of the head, reasonably be expected to

(c) disclose positions taken, or to be taken, or plans, procedures, criteria or instructions used or followed, or to be used or followed, for the purpose of any negotiations carried on or being, or to be, carried on by or on behalf of the Government or a public body.

2) All minutes, record notes (formal and informal), e-mails, diary entries and other documents relating to that included any or all of the following organisations, companies, their representatives and/or their agents: Redscape, OKRA, O’Connor Sutton Cronin (engineers), Venhoeven CS (architects), Howley Hayes (conservation architects), Fehily Timoney (environment and ecology), Modus Operandi (art consultants), and Davis Langdon PKS (quantity surveyors) or any other members of the Marina Park design team.

This information is part granted. The report of Howley Hayes (Architectural Heritage Assessment) is attached.

The remaining information is refused under Section 20(1) Deliberations of Public Bodies.

3) All minutes of meetings that included any or all of the following organisations, companies, their representatives and/or their agents: Malachy Walsh & Partners, Consulting Engineers and Scott Tallon Walker Architects or any other members of the Pairc Ui Chaoimh redevelopment team”

This information is refused  under Section 20 Deliberations of Public Bodies and Section 21 Functions and Negotiations of Public Bodies.

Right of Appeal

You may appeal this decision.  Please note that a fee applies for an appeal, with the exception of an appeal against the imposition of a fee.  The level of this has been set at €75.00.  In the event that you need to make such an appeal, you can do so by writing to:

Ms Valerie O’ Sullivan

Director of Services,

Corporate and External Affairs,

Cork City Council,

City Hall,

Cork.

…enclosing the appropriate fee.  Payment should be made by way of bank draft, money order, postal order or personal cheque payable to Cork City Council.  You should make your appeal within 4 weeks (20 working days) from the date of this notification, however, the making of a late appeal may be permitted in appropriate circumstances.  The appeal will involve a complete reconsideration of the matter by a more senior member of staff of Cork City Council.

Yours sincerely,

NOREEN MULCAHY

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION OFFICER

Letter: Re Cork City Council meeting

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We the residents of Ballintemple are outraged at what transpired at the council meeting on 10th Dec. 2012. The more than quarter of a million euro design of the Marina Park is to be scrapped. The council voted to defer its approval for public consultation. The reason as put by Councillor Michael Ahearn is the GAA are not happy with the plans for the park and they want it changed to accommodate their new plans which we believe are to substantially increase the amount of land already agreed to a much larger parcel of lands.

Meetings with the park designers were held  in good faith which have now been declared null and void. This is due to a  surprising last minute usurpation of the whole process by the GAA . The City Council capitulated to the wishes of an organisation to have its own design and its own process of public consultation scrapped to accommodate the demand of the GAA for more land.

If this criticism of the City Councils plans  were coming from any other  community other than the GAA , it would not be accepted by a single Councillor or indeed any official of the City Council . However, in light of their relentless criticism of anything less than making this parkland their own private enclave, serving their own personal visions, and their own self-serving desires, they simply become the de facto arbiters of what the Council will be allowed to develop on its own lands and that of the people of Cork. Let’s face the facts: (1) They want an all weather pitch  for their own private use that excludes the general population of Cork  and people from outside their organisation  (2) nothing – ABSOLUTELY NOTHING – must interfere or obstruct their views of what is allowable on public land (3) They want easy access to their facilities to the determinant of all other users , but it must be “one way” so that others do not use the same path to actually get into public  parkland (4) recreational facilities must be design for them and them only and they will dictate what sports should or should not be played

The City council have wasted 250,000 euros of taxpayers money on a design which will now accompany  Diarmuid Gavins Sky Garden as a non starter .

PATRICK MULLEY

CHAIRPERSON OF BALLINTEMPLE RESIDENTS

Everything is Local.

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As part of our on-going work to raise awareness of the issues surrounding the re-zoning of public park land for private development by the GAA at the show grounds in Cork we took the opportunity to meet with our local Member for the European Parliament (MEP), Brian Crowley last Friday, 5th October.

Before you start getting ideas that this involved an expensive ‘fact-finding’ mission to Brussels in order to meet Brian I can assure you that as we have a budget similar to a child’s pocket-money account and we do all our work on a pro-bono basis it was more a question of meeting up after work in a local hotel!

Before we met Brian we had a chat about what we would tell him and, if we’re honest, what good it would do us. As far as we’re concerned the whole issue of a public park for a city like Cork is pretty local and there isn’t much Europe or an MEP could do for us. Still, if you know Brian Crowley, Ireland’s longest serving MEP, you’ll realise that despite spending most of his time in Europe he has never lost touch with the things that matter to his constituents.

Brian had become aware of our campaign through social media and was interested in what we had to say. When explaining the story to-date to Brian We were adamant, as we have been since the start of this whole thing, that we are neither anti-GAA (as we have been portrayed from time-to-time) nor anti-development. Rather we are anti-bad planning and pro-citizen. We think that a city exists because of the citizens and they should be integral to the decision making within the city. So far, the re-zoning and selling off of the showgrounds has been presented as a fait-accompli between the City Council and the GAA.

Like any good politician Brian was neither for nor against the proposed GAA works in the showgrounds. We talked to him about how the proposed second pitch would impact on the area and what it would do to the natural habitat, the residents of the area and the proposed marina park. He seemed to understand the issues and made some interesting points to us; some we knew already and some which were news to us. We emphasised our desire for compromise on issues relating to the second pitch but told him that these had been ignored so far.

He pointed out that in terms of any development of this scale an Environmental Impact Assessment would probably be required and that this would invariably involve a public hearing where many of the issues would be discussed. We knew this but Brian added that as Ireland has just ratified the Aarhus Convention which makes the requirement of public bodies to include the public in decision making legally binding and to ensure that the public have recourse to justice if they want to challenge these decisions.

He also pointed out that as citizens of Europe we all have a fundamental right to petition the European Parliament in relation to any issue which we feel represents a breach of a citizen’s rights. While the Petitions Committee cannot overturn the decisions of a member state they can shine a very bright light on cases where the rights of citizens are infringed. They can also refer issues to the European Commission who can investigate whether a member state (that’s euro-speak for the country you live in) has complied with European law. The Commission does have the right to refer these matters to the European Court of Justice who can take action.

If all that sounds confusing just think about some recent issues in Ireland such as the Septic Tank Charge – this is as a result of Ireland not complying with an EU law from 1975 called the waste directive. If we didn’t start complying with this law we would be fined €26,000 per day by the EU.

If all that still sounds confusing then don’t worry. What it really means is that if you can’t sort something out locally then you can refer it to the European Union to help you get justice.

We were quite impressed with this information. This alone made our meeting worthwhile.

That said, we told Brian that we thought the provision of a public park and the redevelopment of Páirc Uí Chaoimh were local issues best sorted out by the local democratic process. After all, that’s what local Councillors and Local Government was all about.

Brian agreed and as he said himself: Even in Europe, everything is local.

List of Councillors who voted to Save the Marina Park.

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City Councillors voted on the 16th April here is the list of Councillors who were on our side.

* Cllr Mick Barry

* Cllr Catherine Clancy

* Cllr Patricia Gosch

* Cllr Des Cahill

* Cllr Denis O’Flynn

* Cllr Chris O’Leary

* Cllr Kieran McCarthy

* Cllr Jim Corr

* Cllr Lorraine Kingston

The full list of Cork City Councillors can be found here. Why not speak to your local representative and let them know that the City needs more green space and not another GAA pitch.

Code of Conduct for Councillors