Liffey Valley planners ‘didn’t care for the ordinary Joe Soap’

The development of the Liffey Valley shopping centre at Quarryvale in west Dublin is one of the most controversial in the county’s history.

For 20 years, planners had zoned another site in Balgaddy as the town centre for the Lucan and Clondalkin communities until county councillors decided in the early 1990s to do a U-turn.

It was also the involvement and eventual clashing of two ambitious developers which influenced the move to make Quarryvale the new town centre. But the new location was further away from the deprived communities it was meant to serve.