It is “quite disrespectful” to refer to people who object to the building of an ‘air dome’ over a tennis court as NIMBYs, the Dublin Democratic Planning Alliance has said.
The Fitzwilliam Lawn Tennis Club in Ranelagh has sought permission to build a 10-metre-high white inflated ‘air dome’ that would allow members to play indoors during bad weather.
Neighbours of the tennis club have lodged objections, claiming it would “make the quality of life in the neighbourhood intolerable”, while also reducing property prices.
On The Hard Shoulder, Dublin Democratic Planning Alliance Chair Robin Mandal said he believes the objectors “have a point” and urged people not to refer to them as ‘NIMBYs’ - a word which stands for ‘Not In My Backyard’.
“The narrative is phrased in such a way that these are NIMBYs - which is a term I certainly dislike, it's sort of quite disrespectful,” he said.
“But the power of the NIMBYs is grossly overestimated; any person can make an observation on a planning application and it's dealt with as any other one is.”
Mr Mandal added that while he has not looked in detail at Fitzwilliam Lawn Tennis Club’s proposal, there is always a balance that needs to be struck between development and residents’ wishes.
“I have been aware of fairly recent developments at Fitzwilliam, where they added two floors on what used to be the public viewing platform,” he said.
“That did have quite a serious impact on the houses across the road.
“But you live in a city and you have to expect some sort of leeway in terms of the social uses and the private uses.”
In any case, Mr Mandal noted that the Planning and Development Act 2024 has significantly curtailed people’s rights to object to developments in their local area.
“The appeal process under the new legislation, that's much faster than it used to be,” he added.
“People were very often blamed for the delays within the system, rather than the actual speed with which decisions were made.
“In terms of judicial review, the Government has changed rules, which I think is fundamentally wrong, actually, but that's neither here nor there.
“It will make it virtually impossible for anybody except the very wealthy or the very poor to take judicial reviews.”
Main image: A tennis player. Picture by: Alamy.com.
