Analysis: there have been numerous proposals over the years to reclaim land from Dublin Bay to use for everything from housing to an airport

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Recent discussions of the housing crisis have seen the possibility of reclaiming land from Dublin Bay being raised, with very mixed responses. This is unsurprising, given the complicated relationship between Dubliners and their aquatic hinterland. What we think of as a natural setting has been subject to many past human interventions.

Much of the present-day city of Dublin has been reclaimed from the sea and the river Liffey. Indeed, as the Dublin pages of the Irish Historic Towns Atlas demonstrate, the present-day shoreline is dramatically different from that of earlier eras. Human intervention in Dublin Bay has taken multiple forms, from the creation of the Bull Island, an unintended outcome of the construction of the North Bull Wall, to the deliberate filling in of the area next to the strand to become modern-day Fairview Park, and the multiple extensions of Dublin Port eastwards into the bay.

1922 saw the publication of the first modern town plan for the capital, entitled Dublin of the Future. The plan by Patrick Abercrombie, Sydney Kelly and Arthur Kelly, had won a 1914 competition sponsored by the then lord lieutenant of Ireland, Lord Aberdeen, and promoted by the Civics Institute of Ireland which, among other elements, had sought proposals for housing.

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From RTÉ Archives, Martina Fitzgerald reports for RTÉ News on a "plan" for 42,000 apartments, a giraffe park and three golf courses for Dublin Bay in 2006

By the time of its publication, political circumstances in Ireland had changed dramatically, but the 'housing difficulty' remained. The plan argued for suburban housing with adequate transit schemes to solve this problem, and included suggestions for immediate schemes and slightly longer-term proposals. Reclamation at Merrion Strand for housing was part of a third and final phase, as one of the ‘lines of future growth’. The competition plan had no formal status and, although some of the suggestions including house construction at Cabra and Crumlin did come to pass, some of the more expensive and ‘showy’ proposals, including the proposed intervention in Dublin Bay, were quickly forgotten.

A decade later, a rather different land-use, reflecting advances in transportation infrastructure, was proposed for Merrion Strand. Writing in Studies, the Jesuit-run learned journal, engineer Desmond McAteer argued that Dublin needed an airport. With a daily air service already in operation between Belfast and London, McAteer suggested that 'the provision of a suitable airport should be one of the first duties of the City Fathers at the present time'. The large, flat and easily accessible site at Merrion Strand could be reclaimed behind a three-mile long sea wall providing land for the aerodrome, a possible adjacent seadrome for flying-boats, housing sites, sports grounds, public parks and even an amusement park.

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From RTÉ Radio 1's Drivetime, David Browne of the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland, and Paddy McCartan, Fine Gael councillor, on the proposal to reclaim Sandymount Strand in order to build more houses in Dublin

The aerodrome idea was an appealing one in the context of the time. In May 1936, a year after McAteer’s article, the Dublin Port and Docks Board – which claimed jurisdiction over the port area, the river Liffey’s quays and the broader Dublin bay - discussed the potential of reclaiming Merrion Strand for an airport. This would be in line with the activity of their northern counterparts, the Belfast Harbour Commissioners, who had completed a new airport on 365 acres of land reclaimed from the sea.

Dublin’s new airport was eventually sited at Collinstown, but plans to reclaim Merrion Strand remained current. The 1941 Sketch Development Plan, the first official modern town plan for Dublin, returned to the potential of creating a land bank at the strand.

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From RTÉ Archives, David Timlin reports for RTÉ News in 1972 on opposition to plans to develop the Bay

In the plan, consultants Sir Patrick Abercrombie, Sydney Kelly and Manning Robertson envisaged significant growth in the city region. Reclamation behind a sea wall at Merrion Strand, similar to McAteer’s proposal, would facilitate housing development at 30 houses per acre (75 per hectare), well above the original garden suburb density suggested by Abercrombie’s earlier proposal in Dublin of the Future. The plan received a mixed response and very few of its proposals were realised.

Joe Brady’s recent Dublin from 1970 to 1990: The City Transformed demonstrates how discussion over the use of Dublin Bay had become increasingly polarised by the late 1960s and early 1970s, between those advocating leisure use and those pushing for more industry. This new era began as the changing nature of shipping activities led Dublin Port and Docks Board to intensify its reclamation activities. Such a transformation was possible with little input from Dublin’s local authorities due to historic and complex governance structures, whereby the bay was an ongoing point of dispute between the rival concerns of two competing authorities – the Dublin Port Company (previously Dublin Port and Docks Board, successor to the Ballast Board) and Dublin Corporation (now Dublin City Council).

In 1972 the Dublin Bay Preservation Association broke the news that a £50 million oil refinery was being planned for a 200 acre (81ha) site in the South Wall/ Sandymount area of Dublin Bay. Its spokesperson, Seán 'Dublin Bay' Loftus, became a well-known environmental campaigner and would subsequently be elected to Dublin Corporation and Dáil Éireann.

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From RTÉ Archives, Patrick Gallagher reports for 7 Days in 1975 on divided opinions on a plan to build an oil refinery in Dublin Bay

A few months later, Dublin Port and Docks Board published their long-awaited ‘studies’, presenting a series of possibilities for the future development of the port. The most dramatic and controversial suggestion was to fill in most of the bay for industry and high-rise housing. On the southside, 1,740 acres (704 ha) of the bay would be filled in behind a line from Blackrock Baths to the Poolbeg lighthouse and on the northside a further 550 acres (222 ha) from the Bull Wall to Fairview would be reclaimed. Reaction from lobby groups and political parties quickly followed, and the future of Dublin Bay became a live political and social topic.

At the same time, a further threat to the bay came in the form of the Dublin Transportation Study's proposed Eastern Bypass, a two-lane dual carriageway with room for expansion to six lanes, would run along the strand at Sandymount. It was felt that this location was suitable as it would avoid impacting either the historic Georgian core, the focus of protests in the 1960s, or the leafy embassy belt of Ballsbridge. Opposition was instantaneous and given greater impetus by the parallel oil refinery project. After 30 years, the road plan was scrapped in 1992, but replaced by a new proposed route involving a tunnel in 2000

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From RTÉ Archives, a 1967 RTÉ News report from Dublin bay's Bull Island

One of the ultimate outcomes of the controversies in the 1970s was the creation of a special amenity order for Dublin Bay. This was a long and convoluted process, but parts of Dublin Bay gained special amenity status in 1981 while North Bull Island, already recognised from 1931 as Ireland’s first national bird sanctuary, became a UNESCO biosphere reserve. In 2015 the Biosphere was expanded to cover all of Dublin Bay, reflecting its significant environmental, economic, cultural and tourism importance.

With over 300,000 people living within the 300km² of the biosphere area, it is not surprising that Dublin Bay remains a contested space. Controversy over conflicting potential uses of the bay and the needs of its human and non-human residents is likely to be further exacerbated given current projections for sea level rise which will inevitably lead to another reshaping of the area.

The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ