Residents told: What I do, I do for them

Cork City Council has said it acted in the interests of residents as a court case concerning access rights to a green area in Mayfield came to an end.

There was laughter from residents in the public gallery at Cork Circuit Court yesterday when Dave Holland, senior counsel for the local authority, said, “What I do, I do for them.”

Acknowledging the response of the residents in court, Judge Seán Ó Donnabháin suggested that Mr Holland should repeat himself. This came after three days of evidence and legal submissions about the residents’ assertion of a historically based right of use of the land, known as the Tank Field, versus the council’s plans to sell two of the 10-plus acres to a gaelscoil to build a school, and make changes in the arrangements for Brian Dillon’s GAA club in the area.

Mr Holland repeated that the council was acting in the interests of residents, and added: “I make no bones about that. Particular parts of the community may not agree with what is done for other parts of the community. But the reconciliation of rights of different groups is the job of the council. It is the political position, it is the democratic position, it is the constitutional position.”

He said conflicting rights of different residents had to be balanced by the local authority, and that it should be allowed to perform this function without fear of the assertion of customary rights. Mr Holland said the council allowed residents to use the Tank Field, and would continue to permit them to use most of it in the way that they had used it, but he insisted they did not have this permission as a right.

Marie Baker, senior counsel for the residents, said that even with a covenant from the local authority setting out how the Tank Field would be left after the developments, the residents would be left with no rights, and she continued to assert their right of use yesterday. The dispute about right of use is the key issue in the case.

Ms Baker said that while the level and kind of use had changed over the decades since the 1930s, this partly resulted from the demographics of the area, where many householders were retired. She said they may not be out throwing Frisbees and kicking footballs, but they were using it recreationally nonetheless.

Mr Holland said there was no evidence of use of the land prior to 1933, when Cork Corporation took it over, and he said that the local authority had made various changes over the decades and residents never asserted a right of use. He said, for instance, that a significant portion of the Tank Field was put into use as allotments for needy families to grow vegetables in the 1950s and that this obviously reduced the recreational use of the land at that time.

Judge Ó Donnabháin will give his decision in the case next Monday.