Resident angered over council work

Aoife O’Brien 

A NORTHSIDE resident has been left irate after Dublin City Council allegedly damaged a wall while cutting back overgrown ivy on the public side of his property.  

Ian McDonagh, who has been living in Coolock village since 2005, had been requesting that the city council maintain the ivy since May 2018. 

Illegal dumping, including fly-tipping, had became a regular occurrence in the massive overgrowth which Mr McDonagh said he had to remove himself regularly so that the city council would collect it.

The situation finally came to a head on January 20 when there was an incident involving a number of males dumping rubbish in the hedge.   

According to Mr McDonagh, the following day, the city council sent five men out to cut back the ivy. However, he claimed that instead of using a petrol hedge cutter, as would have been used in previous years, a roadside flail mower that was too big for the area was used.

“They couldn’t fit the flail machine cutter in between the trees like they should have done but they wedged it in anyway,” alleged Mr McDonagh.

“They dislodged the capping stones the length of the wall, and all the planting I had at the back, the banana tree I had growing, all got capped by this inappropriate machine.”

Mr McDonagh said all of the waste, which had been dumped in the hedge, was shredded during the cutting and left strewn at the side of the house and the grass on the public walkway was also severely dug up by the machinery.

For safety and aesthetic reasons, Mr McDonagh said he was forced to remove the rest of the ivy from the public side of his house, affording him no privacy or protection from pedestrian traffic, in his back garden.

When Mr McDonagh contacted the city council’s Parks and Landscape division to complain about the job, he said he was sent a picture of his neighbour’s house where a perfect job had been done on cutting back the hedging. 

He responded with photographic evidence of the condition the side of his house had been left in after the city council’s work. 

Dublin City Council removed the rubbish that had been left strewn at the side of the house a week after the work had been carried out. However, Mr McDonagh said he has not received any apology to date for the damage caused by the work.

A spokesperson for Dublin City Council told Northside People: “The Parks Department is liaising with the customer directly in this regard so we do not have any further comment.”