Good news for the young and young at heart: a treehouse in Killiney at the heart of an acrimonious south Dublin planning dispute will be allowed to remain in place, at least for the time being.
The arboreal amenity sits in a very desirable location, a stone’s throw from the sea amid the fine Victorian houses of the Killiney Architectural Conservation Area on Military Road. The elegant and spacious house to which it belongs, Lothlorien, suits the sylvan setting, named as it is after the realm of the elves from JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. It’s a handsome six-bed with things like “garden room” and “wine cellar” on the floor plan when it was previously on the market.
A good place for a treehouse, you’d think. Not according to several neighbours, however.
One extremely comprehensive objection described the structure as “towering 3.63m above raised ground (5.63m in total above the road)”, overlooking other properties. “I have never seen any children using the treehouse,” the objector went on.
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The structure itself is also aesthetically subpar (“It has a hard industrial appearance reminiscent of a fire watch-tower”), may have negative effects on drainage, and is all-in-all “folly for the whimsical amusement of humans” which is “likely to disturb birds”.
Others joined in against the “large and overbearing eyesore”, including one man who heard about the issue from a fellow swimmer at Killiney Beach. To no avail.
“Grant retention permission,” quoth An Coimisiún Pleanála.
The inspector in her report found that while the structure (“which I refer to for consistency’s sake as a treehouse but which lacks a roof, window or full-height walls”) is somewhat bulky, it’s “a continuation of the tradition of an architecture of amusement in the area”, along the lines of local gazebos and summerhouses past.
Not all neighbours were negative either. One remembered playing in Lothlorien’s garden in the 1970s, while another even hailed the structure as “a positive reminder to the many children passing on their way to school to look up from their digital world and engage in the real world and play”.
So the treehouse stays, for the time being at least. We wish passing swimmers all the best at this difficult time.
Reality check
When the interim report is laid before the subcommittee and the deemed disposal rolls around in the Dirt, even the most clued-in newshound can be forgiven for failing to follow.
Three cheers then for RTÉ, who have appointed a guide for the perplexed in the form of a “clarity correspondent”. Multimedia journalist Kate McDonald will burnish the sword of truth with the oil of intelligibility and use it to slice through the confusion, RTÉ said this week (we’re paraphrasing).
On closer inspection, however, it emerges that the clarity correspondent will in fact be dealing with “disinformation, discourse, and democracy”, tackling AI deepfakes, false narratives, social media rabbit-hole radicalisation and all the other wondrous trappings of modernity assailing us through our phones.
It’s an interesting time to do it. An interim report – did we mention we love interim reports? – by the US house judiciary committee earlier this month claimed EU bullies caused social media platforms to censor “true information and political speech” on such uncontentious issues as “the Covid-19 pandemic, mass migration, and transgender issues”.
On their list of grievances were “biased fact-checkers” they allege the European Commission and Coimisiún na Méan deployed for Irish elections in an effort to keep things roughly reality based.
For every effort to tackle some online social ill in Ireland – and there are many these days – there is a phalanx of US congresspeople, tech giants, podcasters and anonymous grumblers ready to attack. We wish the clarity correspondent the best in holding the line.
High-vis conundrum
City cyclists got the fright of their life earlier this month when it was reported that helmets and high-vis gear may become mandatory for all bicycle users, not just those on high-powered e-bikes and e-scooters.
Anyone on a saddle would be subject to Garda fines for failing to comply under draft proposals at the Department of Transport, IrishCycle.com reported earlier this month, based on a departmental statement.
Good news for drivers on country lanes, but a potential problem in the capital where, according to CSO data, 10 per cent of people cycle to work.
Helmets and high-vis make some sense from a safety perspective, though data is less clear than you might think. Where they don’t make sense is in encouraging take-up of cycling. The world’s most enthusiastic cyclists in the Netherlands make 36 per cent of all journeys by bike and own a staggering 1.3 bicycles per person. Helmet rates are less than 1 per cent, though efforts are in place to try to improve this.
Helmets are meanwhile compulsory in much of Australia, which saw safety benefits only at the level of other countries that tackled traffic issues such as drink-driving without mandating protective gear. The laws did, however, discourage cycling.
Luckily, it’s a nolle prosequi: the Department of Transport later clarified that “the introduction of mandatory PPE for users of bicycles is outside the scope of the current measures”, confirming this to Overheard. E-bikes and e-scooters only.
Basket-weaving breaks CAO containment
For generations, Irish Leaving Cert students have mulled putting down mythic courses to catch them if they fall below the points expected of them. In Overheard’s day it was most commonly jam-making at a regional institution, or sometimes basket-weaving.
This has always felt like a very Irish phenomenon, talking down skilled labour in pursuit of a workforce consisting entirely of management consultants employed by government departments. So imagine our shock when Doug Ford, the premier of the Canadian province of Ontario, this week accused his own feckless youths of similar studies.
Amid complaints about his cuts to grant money, he shot back. “I mentioned to the students, you have to invest in your future, into in-demand jobs,” he told reporters. “You’re picking basket-weaving courses, and there’s not too many baskets being sold out there.”
There is, of course, no evidence for a horde of apprentice basket-weavers “buying fancy watches and cologne” on the taxpayer’s Canadian dollar, as Ford suggested. Nor for the existence of a CAO course in the craft, despite persistent belief.
