After years of delay to the Strand Road cycle path trial because of a flawed High Court ruling, which was overturned in full by the Court of Appeal on Friday last, a number of councillors want the project delayed further.
The three-judge Court of Appeal found on Friday last that the High Court judge, who originally blocked the trial, erred in his view that the project needed planning permission and erred that it needed full environmental assessments.
The justices also said the High Court judge had erred that the trial would not be temporary, and they said that the legal team for Peter Carvill on behalf of the Serpentine Avenue, Tritonville and Claremont Roads (STC) group and Cllr Mannix Flynn had the opportunity to cross examine the council’s head of traffic but failed to do so.
Cllr David Coffey (Fine Gael) led the charge against the trail of the cycle path. He was co-opted to replace now TD James Geoghegan — who also cycles and has taken a similar stance.
Cllr Coffey’s motion said: “That the South East Area committee: Notes the Court of Appeal judgement concerning the Strand Road Cycle Lane Trial from 2021 delivered on Friday 11th April 2025; Acknowledges that since the trial was originally proposed, the Sandymount Flood Relief project has progressed with the appointment of a contractor…”
And it added: “And agrees that all active travel measures for the Strand Road should be done in tandem with the Sandymount Flood Relief project with the aim of delivering an off-road cycleway.”
Cllr Coffey told fellow councillors at the South East Area committee meeting that: “I’m a cyclist. I cycle to work every day, I’ve been doing so for at least the last ten years, I cycled in here today, and will continue to cycle around the city.”
“I support support cycle lanes and a reduction of traffic in the city. I’d like to see our city a more frendly city for pedestrians and cyclists. So, I’m very much so in favour of that,” he said. He said that the council has “done some great work on some of the cycle lanes where appropriate in the right areas”.
He said: “However, I do not support a one-way solution on the Strand Road.”
He said he lives close to Irishtown Garda Station and said: “Last Saturday I stood there and looked out my window at the traffic, the area is gridlocked as it is and claimed it would cause extra traffic and “would just not work”.
He claimed: “It won’t really affect me, I much walk and cycle everywhere. But the feedback I get from pretty much everybody in the area is that they are opposed to this”, a claim which was even rejected by a fellow councillor who agreed with him that the cycle path should go on a sea wall flood scheme.
Cllr Mannix Flynn said he hoped that the project would not be “railroaded” and that it would go through the proper procedures. But it is unclear what this means given that Cllr Flynn and others have just lost a court case, and the judges made it clear that Section 38 — which Cllr Flynn has repeatedly objected to — is the proper procedure.
Cllr Flynn then vaguely threatened that he could still go to the Supreme Court or the European courts to challenge the Court of Appeal’s judgement, stating that “there are opportunities to do that if one chooses to do that” but claimed then he didn’t want to be doing such.
Despite vaguely threatening further legal action, Cllr Flynn again claimed that the issues that the Court of Appeal ruled on were some kind of abstract argument between two sets of judges.
However, the substantive issues in the High Court judgement, which was overruled in full, were largely based on arguments put forward by the STC group and Cllr Flynn, who joined in STC group in the case.
Cllr Flynn also criticised the Dublin Cycling Campaign for “gloating” because of a cycle protest seeking a safe cycle route on Friday, which he called “immature” and “childish”.
But the Dublin Cycling Campaign did not organise the protest cycle; rather, a different group called I Bike Dublin did, and, as reported by this website early last week, it was planned to be run regardless of the outcome of the case.
Cllr Flynn also claimed that “it’s very unfortunate that we ended up in this situation where the Courts have to make Dublin City Council policy”. However, unlike the High Court ruling, which strayed into disagreeing with policy, there is no indication that the ruling on Friday made any view on policy.
Cllr Rory Hogan (Fianna Fáil) also wanted to make it clear that his support for a motion against a cycle lane was “not being against cycle lanes”.
Despite the Irish Water works, which closed Strand Road one-way, proving that a previously claimed worst case scenario did not materialise, Cllr Hogan claimed the cycle path would cause traffic to flood into Sandymount.
He said he wanted a new grass area expanded into what is a protected area in Dublin Bay. He expressed frustration that there has been in-fill of the part of Dublin Bay at Sandymount in, he understands, the 1980s, which he viewed as a “relatively recent”, but that this was not happening now.
Dublin Bay was designated as a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in 2015, and other EU environmental protections only derived from an EU directive first agreed on in the 1990s.
Cllr Hazel Chu (Green Party) said that despite the claim in the motion, there is no contractor for the flood defences; there will then be a planning phase, which will take some length of time.
“The flood defences won’t happen for at least another five years after waiting five years already with the Court cases,” she said. “I want to know from other councillors why are we willing to wait so long to build a better city? Why are we willing to wait so long to look at proper climate action and to provide for more sustainable travel?”
Cllr Carolyn Moore (Green Party) said: “I find this motion incredibly cynical, and I appreciate your rationale for having this discussion, Chair, I cannot believe we’re entertaining it [the motion]. This project that we’re discussing now has already been on hold for four years, and the irony is that it was always intended to be a rapid rollout project.”
“And incorporating it into the flood defences, as the councillors supporting it no doubt know, it would see this go back on the long finger possibly for the guts of five years…. or it could be a decade.”
Cllr Moore said: “In the meantime, I’m glad that Cllr Coffey feels safe cycling in the area, but unfortunately, a huge amount of people do not feel safe cycling in that area or through that area and what’s always been critical to the Strand Road project is that it’s a project with citywide impact.”
She said that many people who feel unsafe are driving distances that can be cycled and that they might wish to cycle.
Cllr Moore added that councillors do not even know if it is feasible or possible to include the cycle path in whatever type of flood defences are chosen for the area and that she did not want to wait another ten years to find out without safe cycling in the area.
Cllr Pat Dunne (independent) highlighted how well making the road one-way for a cycle path has worked in the Dún Laoghaire area.
Cllr Dermot Lacey (Labour) said it is not fair to say that everybody in the area was against it. However, he also criticised the level of consultation before the planned trial, despite the level of consultation being much higher than some other schemes.
Cllr Lacey said that it was claimed to be a trial, and “nobody believed that was the case”. This issue was one of the central issues in the Court of Appeal case, which the court overruled the High Court on.
As outlined clearly in the published judgement and previous reporting, the council’s head of transport, Brendan O’Brien, made sworn affidavits that the project was a trial.
The Court of Appeal ruled: “While is far from satisfactory that no written section 38 order or decision exists, the available material – including but not limited to the order of the 25 February 2021 – makes it sufficiently clear that what was proposed, and what was authorised, was a six month trial. That was stated in all the project documents. The entire consultation process was conducted on that basis. It was also stated repeatedly and unambiguously on affidavit by Mr O’Brien.”
It said: “If the Applicants wished to challenge that evidence, then they should have sought to cross-examine Mr O’Brien. The unavoidable implication of the Judge’s finding on this issue was that the City Council and Mr Brien had consistently misrepresented the Scheme both to councillors and to the public.”
The Court added: “In this Court’s view, there was no evidence to sustain such a serious finding, which reflected adversely and unfairly on the integrity of the City Council and its officers and in particular Mr O’Brien. In the circumstances, the High Court Judge erred in finding that the Scheme was not temporary.”
Cllr Lacey also said that it was “outrageous” that the former transport minister widened the powers of council officials using Section 38 of the Road Traffic Acts, which gives what he claims are “dictatorial” powers. These powers were given in primary legislation by the by the Houses of the Oireachtas in 2009 when Ryan was a minister in another department.
As transport minister, Ryan published formalised guidelines on Section 38 after the Court of Appeal criticised the lack of guidelines in open court. The guidelines formalise how to use Section 38, including specifying some timelines and processes. It does not expand legal powers under Section 38, if anything, it somewhat restricts how the powers can be used.
Cllr Lacey indicated that he supports the idea of integrating a cycleway into the flood works, and he said he did not understand why the flood works — in a protected area and a project which does not have planning permission — could not “start now”.
Cllr Lacey, who is the chair of the local area committee, said that he would not like to see a vote taken after such a short discussion and no vote was taken on the motion.
Claire French, senior executive engineer with Dublin City Council, said that a cycle path as part of a flood scheme could take “five to ten years minimum” for anything to be built.
She said that council officials have not developed a full view on the next steps as it has hardly been a full working day since the judgement was issued on Friday. French added that officials could report back to the next area meeting with a report.
After the meeting, Dublin Commuters, a group which advocates for sustainable transport, said: “Mannix Flynn in the chamber today did a number of things: Incorrectly attributed Friday’s I Bike Dublin event to the Dublin Cycling Campaign; Implied campaigners calling for safe cycling were in some manner acting ‘childish’; and incorrectly suggested the Courts are making Dublin City Council policy.”
I find it odd that Dermot Lacey calls the section 38 powers “dictatorial” and then insinuates the council should just plough ahead with flood planning works without following proper procedure.
Cllr Coffey should pay a visit to Dundrum village and see the transformative effect of introducing a one-way traffic system in conjunction with reallocating space for people from vehicles. Dundrum village has truly been released from a stranglehold of car dominance. What’s more, the traffic restrictions have not resulted in chaos and general Armageddon elsewhere: it’s the classic case of traffic evaporation. Yes some traffic has been redistributed on the network but the measures are likely to have also encouraged a modal shift and deterred trivial or non-essential car trips.
There seems to be a collective amnesia regarding the impact on traffic when the Irish Water project closed off one lane of Strand Road.
This ‘I am a cyclist’ lark really annoys me, especially when it comes from someone from a particular demographic (often adult cis-male) who is privileged to have been conditioned to have a sense of being strong, fit and fast even while cycling amongst big fast and lethal machines. Absolutely not the case for everyone. I feel unsafe, wobbly, slow and extremely vulnerable when a car, ‘bike’ or fellow-cyclist passes within four inches of me. Strand Road is so horrible that I regularly break the law and cycle on the footpath – I’d rather deal with the constant stopping and getting on/off the bike to attempt to make up for the inconvenience, discomfort and hassle I am causing to pedestrians, than have a constant brush with death due to w**k-panzers (as George Monbiot describes ‘SUVs’) crawling threateningly up my ass or lashing past within a hair’s breadth.
Well said!
Seems to be a common argument that ‘It’s fine for me, so it should be fine for everyone’. It’s gotten really tiresome now.
If these commentators really do cycle (which I doubt for the most part, but that’s another story), they likely subscribe to ‘vehicular cycling’, which eschews cycle lanes and tries to put about the idea that bikes should act just like other vehicular traffic, and anyone who needs a cycle lane/due consideration isn’t ‘doing it right’.
But like I say, a lot of the people starting their nonsensical claims with ‘I’m a cyclist’/’As an avid cyclist’ are probably not on the level. And I say this as someone who is ‘not a cyclist’!
Not a cyclist either;)
When recently someone said to me “so are you an avid cyclist?” I said no. I use a bike to commute from A to B in the fastest and most efficient way, and absolutely not for the pleasure of it.