Childrens' Hospital Planning Refusal [PR]

rodento

Personally I think they should put in a couple of applications covering different sites, on the grounds that if one fails than at least there are other options

Laminations

MadsL wrote: »

Actually I did, I identified it as a strawman. It is. Your tower scenario is not the same as building a hospital.
Your analogy presupposes an number of preconditions that simply are not present with the NPH

Can you point out the did similarities?
Both share
1) an agreed need for the structure
2) a dispute over best location
3) a recommendation from experts as to the best location
4) this location contravening some planning guideline.

It is not about me. It is about sustainable planning and development.

That's where we differ and have done throughout. To me it's about building the best children's hospital that money* can buy.

*thats money that we have (versus some fantasy budget) which is a real barrier as opposed to planning guidelines.

Now, let me ask you a question as I did earlier, would you rather see an alternative (co-located inner city) site than a "cut down" Mater site?

I've answered this. I'd support the best site, which when you limit my options like that would be the full co-location site. But I wouldnt see another site as best if it was being compared to a handicapped Mater plan. If a new review only considers a scaled-back Mater plan it isn't really comparing its full potential to other sites so you'd be steering my support to whatever site you wanted.

Which is better chicken or fish. Hmmm fish. Well you can't have fish, only fish heads, now which is better?

Laminations

You havent addressed my point on how to choose the right number of alternatives to review?

What about alternatives to these alternatives? Like grangegorman or co-locating with the Mater site at Dalymount, or out in the Ward, or Sillogue? Or maybe they should reconsider Tallaght with some extra bit of land tacked on, or Cork or Athlone?

It's a situation of a decision being made and then pushed off the table based on planning issues. So planning superseding best clinical advice. You won't answer my towers scenario because it tests you conviction to planning guidelines to the limit. Do you choose a second best location on something as important as health care provision. You've consistently argued that a hospital is not a specialist/exceptional case, but it is.

MadsL

Laminations wrote: »

That's where we differ and have done throughout. To me it's about building the best children's hospital that money* can buy.

*thats money that we have (versus some fantasy budget) which is a real barrier as opposed to planning guidelines.

edit: Incidentally, isn't that money we may have if we sell off the Lotto?

And you seem to imply that somehow I oppose that? Aren't we back to 'think of the children'?

planning guidelines

read back to the comments about the Development Plan being 'an environmental contract with the people'. Planning is not some optional extra.

Could you stop posting twice:

It's a situation of a decision being made and then pushed off the table based on planning issues. So planning superseding best clinical advice. You won't answer my towers scenario because it tests you conviction to planning guidelines to the limit. Do you choose a second best location on something as important as health care provision. You've consistently argued that a hospital is not a specialist/exceptional case, but it is.

Your tower scenario is as real as saying "we have to give everyone a pill to save their lives, but it will make unborn babies spontaneously abort" Should we issue the pill?

It's a strawman trying to push an outcome. I'm not playing games.


Hospitals are not extraordinary/exceptional cases as much as you want to tug at heartstrings to make them so.

McDave

Laminations wrote: »

Run roughshod? Run? It has been six years in planning and consultation.

I would say 'run roughshod' is a reasonable depiction. There are very strong suspicions that the location was politically motivated. A high profile member left the project board intimating as much. And Norah Casey was a little bit too 'Marie Antoinette' in condemning the An BP decision. To my mind (and of course I can't prove this) that betrayed that the mindset of a coterie was at work. A coterie that was expecting the project to go through on the nod, without bothersome interference from statutory bodies exercising their statutory functions.

BTW, it's not the planning board's or the planning process's fault that the P&C process took six years. Or that it ignored representations over a year ago that the planning application would fail.

McDave

Laminations wrote: »

Of course the planning advice should be considered - in the round with all the other considerations, and the medical advice should have priority.

This comment is so far wide of the mark, it's really hard to credit.

Planning law and the planning process exists in its own right and on a statutory basis. Statute law passed by the Oireachtas. It is not an optional extra. It is not a mere and casual offer of advice. It can only be overturned on appeal or by specific mandate from the minister.

Laminations

McDave wrote: »

This comment is so far wide of the mark, it's really hard to credit.

Planning law and the planning process exists in its own right and on a statutory basis. Statute law passed by the Oireachtas. It is not an optional extra. It is not a mere and casual offer of advice. It can only be overturned on appeal or by specific mandate from the minister.

Jesus, if you are still trying to explain planning to me you've obviously misunderstood me throughout the entire thread. I know how planning is, I'm arguing about how it should be i.e. not the be all and end all in every single project.

You might avoid answering on the tower scenario (and inappropriately compare it to 'abortion pills') but if planning can't adapt to a particular need or concede to particular expert advice from another domain then it has gone like I've said from too lax to too restrictive. We disagree on this as well as on the much needed hospital being an exceptional case.

And I think MadsL, this being a children's hospital and all, think of the children is a more appropriate sentiment than think of the skyline.


PS tell me more about the bit in bold

Laminations

McDave wrote: »

I would say 'run roughshod' is a reasonable depiction. There are very strong suspicions that the location was politically motivated. A high profile member left the project board intimating as much. And Norah Casey was a little bit too 'Marie Antoinette' in condemning the An BP decision. To my mind (and of course I can't prove this) that betrayed that the mindset of a coterie was at work. A coterie that was expecting the project to go through on the nod, without bothersome interference from statutory bodies exercising their statutory functions.

How did Bertie politically motivate an independent international panel to choose the Mater? And how after 3 to 4 years out of office did he influence the recent reviews that recommended the Mater? The current Taoiseach is from Mayo, why is he politically motivated to push this site? Oh but to fit your conspiracy theory you'll point to the health minister being from the northside.... Where was minister Harney from?

BTW, it's not the planning board's or the planning process's fault that the P&C process took six years. Or that it ignored representations over a year ago that the planning application would fail.

I never said it was.

FreudianSlippers

Environmental contract is nothing but judicial fluff. There is no such thing and the development plan is not a binding contract.

Before you get all moany again, of course the act is law but that doesn't make the development plan law. A development plan which does not impose maximum limits for height but rather imposes subjective guidelines for buildings over 50m

Laminations

Interesting reading

http://thenewchildrenshospital.ie/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/BLEND-Residents-Pauline-Cadell.pdf

http://thenewchildrenshospital.ie/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/BLEND-Residents-Valerin-OShea.pdf

The latter is a long and detailed document full of direct quotations from LAP and DCDP etc but is wholly based on false assumptions

The Dublin City Development Plan is a statutory contract between Dublin City Council (‘DCC’) and the people of the city.

Hmmm, I wonder who has been quoting from this?

It's funny that she shows such deference to the DCDP but rubbishes the National Development Plan later in her submission as that document cites the Mater as the location for the NCH.

Our interpretation of the statuatory documents is that of the ordinary citizen, which is as it should be, since the Dublin City Plan, being a contract with the people of the city is intended to be read and understood by the people.

My interpretation of the documents is as an ordinary citizen and is at total odds with hers.

Obviously when considering the optimum site for development of any sort, the prime consideration must be the planning requirements.

Why is that 'obvious'? That's her opinion.

While she does make good points she also seems to be the source for the interpretation that the project would negatively impact the skyline. She also shows grave misunderstandings and makes huge logical errors

n relation to paediatric access to off-site adult sub-specialties, I must state that I have no expertise in medical matters but am very puzzled by the following statement which is offered as the deciding factor in this regard:
“Siting the paediatric hospital at the Mater Misericordiae Hospital site would place it between the neurosurgical and transplant teams in Beaumont Hospital and the haematology/radiotherapy and burns staff in St. James’s Hospital thereby maximising access to the relevant off site expertise.”
This conclusion appears illogical to us. How can the Mater Hospital site be better placed to access haematology/radiotherapy (2 of the sub-specialities identified in the McKinsey Report) and the burns medical teams, than St. James’s Hospital, when they are actually located on the St. James’s Hospital site?
It is extraordinary that the Joint Task Group has taken what is one of the strengths of the St. James’s site and called it an advantage for the Mater site thereby turning what was an advantage for St. James into a disadvantage.

I don't know whether that's purposely playing dumb but it's a total misrepresentation of the Mater having the benefit of centrality between the other specialities.

The reality is that if this scheme is permitted to go ahead, it will mean in effect that one government policy i.e. the policy relating to the location of the National Children’s Hospital, would trump all other Government Policy relating to proper planning. The policy to locate the new Children’s Hospital on this site must not be viewed in isolation and certainly cannot be permitted to totally disregard and run rough-shod over other Government Policies as they relate to proper and sustainable development.

Why must it not be viewed in isolation? Why should health policy trump planning policy?

And there's that word rough-shod! I wonder who else has been reading this.


Anyway interesting reading.

MadsL

FreudianSlippers wrote: »

Environmental contract is nothing but judicial fluff. There is no such thing and the development plan is not a binding contract.

Before you get all moany again, of course the act is law but that doesn't make the development plan law. A development plan which does not impose maximum limits for height but rather imposes subjective guidelines for buildings over 50m

You might note that those 'subjective guidelines' are not objective through lack of trying on the part of residents.

Perhaps you believe we should be told what is good for the city by rather autocratic city managers than by the Democratic process of the making of a Development Plan?? Are you also claiming that the Development Plan has no legal standing?

Laminations wrote:

the benefit of centrality

Seriously?

Hmmm, I wonder who has been quoting from this?

And there's that word rough-shod! I wonder who else has been reading this.

More sarky digs. At me I assume. No I haven't been quoting from this, I've been involved in planning activism far longer than that site has had a DNS record. I am actually capable of independent thought.

Now I'm getting pretty sick of your sarcastic personal attacks, and I'm simply not going to tolerate them anymore. Take that tone again and I'm hitting the report button. I think I've been tolerant enough.

Laminations

MadsL wrote: »

Seriously?
.

If this is the quality of response then you can see why you are getting sarky comments. And please can we have less of the scolding comments like I am a bold child. They are not personal attacks, they are criticisms of your responses and opinion.

Now. Yes, seriously. O Sheas misrepresentation of the reports noted benefits of the Mater site in terms of off-site access to specialities is either purposeful or idiotic.

You want to build a house. You want a shop, a post office and a Garda station in close proximity-but as these are qualitatively different you have no preferences or hierarchy. Now there is a house beside the shop, from here the Garda station is 1km to the east and the post office is 2kms to the east. There is a house by the post office, from here the Garda station is 1km west and the shop is 2kms west. And there is a house beside the Garda station where the shop is 1km west and post office is 1km east. Choosing this last house for its central location does not mean you think it subsumes the functions of the others. You know this point and being obtuse is what makes me get sarcastic with you. Similar effect likening my tower analogy to abortion pills or posting pictures of prams (even if you delete them).

Laminations

MadsL wrote: »

I've been involved in planning activism far longer than that site has had a DNS record. I am actually capable of independent thought.

Just out of interest, can you name 5 projects that you've actively campaigned in support of?

K-9

southsiderosie wrote: »

MOD NOTE:

This thread is going around in a death spiral circles. If nobody has anything new to add, I suspect we may be done here.

Mod

On that note I think the time has come.