This is an ancient landscape in two ways. Firstly, it has been farmed for at least 1,500 years or more, given the archaeology of the area with many ringforts (or the remains of) indicating Early Medieval farming in the fields at St. Edmundsbury, Woodville and adjacent townlands. The ecosystem of the wider area has evolved in harmony with this farming practice over time. Secondly, this farmed land which is currently designated "High Amenity land", abuts the SAAO area of the very ancient Liffey Valley woodlands and Liffey river. This very ancient landscape contains some of the rarest virgin woodland remaining in Ireland and should form a protected linear public park running along the geological Liffey Valley. These two ecosystems (ancient farmland and native and ancient woodlands) to a great degree depend on each other now, with the farmland creating a small environmental buffer zone to the SAAO, and should be retained as it is, for this reason.
If it was deemed "High Amenity" previously, what has changed to make it necessary to view it as if it were now an uncomplicated brownfield site? The housing crisis that we are currently experiencing is a clear and present danger to our citizens quality of life, and so much more, and every effort must be made to mobilise as a nation to ensure we house our citizens appropriately and fairly - and indeed, in a price range that ordinary people can access. But the remaining lands at St. Edmundsbury HA are not the suitable site to do this on.
In towns and villages around our country, especially in the central Dublin city centre, and SDCC (and many other local authority) suburban village centrals, we see brownfield and vacant sites galore, some of which have been vacant for decades. The "Protected Structures" (some of substantial size that could house many multiples of units, some even owned by the State and Local Authorities) are sadly too often visibly boarded up, left to become derelict, and often become victims of water ingress, degradation, and most egregiously, sometimes arson by persons unknown. The focus by government and local authorities should be now to build on remaining suitable brownfield sites, at as high a density, and as appropriately with regard to the neighbourhood planning impacts, as they can.
To build on an ecologically sensitive area such as St. Edmundsbury, High Amenity, productive agricultural land (and in the middle of global food insecurity/climate crisis too, with potential for more impacts on imports down the line) that are miles out from the city centre, would be a very flawed decision. This is backed up by the extraordinarily high number of submissions against this rezoning on this site during public consultation.
The decision by SDCC Councillors to vote against rezoning St. Edmundsbury High Amenity to residential, should 100% be upheld, and the faith of the public in the fairness of the public planning consultation process, as well as that of local democracy in action, should be supported by removing St. Edmundsbury from any further residential rezoning proposals, at this, or any other time in the future.