Owen Keegan, DCC manager, sneers at homeless students

But where's the letters the students wrote to him.

Personally I think more people should answer back sarcastically to those that write in a similar way.

As as others have said - why didn't they object? - Not only are the planning files public but this application also got news coverage in both the indo and Irish times when the application was lodged.

So the student were asleep at the wheel, but want to blame the someone else.

And the thread title is straight out of the daily mail school of gutterness. He did not sneer at homeless student, he sneered at the snowflake author who probably wrote a dialogue of tripe.

Not objecting to a Planning Notice but complaining after the fact is the same as the many people who give out all-time about 'Da Guberment' yet when an Election comes around, they don't bother voting.

I genuinely don't think anyone should have and to object to this one whatsoever.

It was given the green light as student accommodation it was purposefully designed. Wheres the argument to tear that planning up after the place was built and before it had one student pass through its doors.

The department in Dublin clearly don't have a clue what they are doing. They are choking the city of local and valuable workforce. All of these people work during colleges. There's an entire ecosystem built around it rather than throwing money abroad into whatever REIT picks it up .

Arse from elbow frankly.

Welcome to capitalism.

Power is a member of Soc Dem and is a pound shop politician in waiting. He has form for this sort of crap. To suggest anyone (even Keegan) should loose their job because he told the gobshite to p!ss off is laughable. Gary Gannon (another dim-witted Soc Dem gimp) has written to the Ceann Comhairle asking for time in the Dail to be made available to respond to Keegan's statement. That just about sums up the standard of politician in this country (and I'm including all parties in that). You have that goon James O'Connor threatening to bring down the government because some one horse town in his constituency wasn't getting a new road and a minister in Charlie McConalogue looking to spend €3bn of taxpayers money to keep his Dail seat. It makes you despair about the new generation of politicians, which seems as parochial and small minded as what came before it.

Keegan has no influence on any Planning decisions that are appealed to An Bord Pleanála, thats the whole point.

It's the one planning list. It's the SU that's been incompetent here, though Keegan is an eejit and a letter like that shows no political nous at all.

Isn't that the same SU that bankrupted the only pub in the largest university in Ireland?!

Because such is the nature of planning.

A person can put in for planning to build a 5-storey extension on the back of their 200 year old house that's passed through 5 generations unchanged.

The local GAA club that's been there decades can put in for planning to host a late night concert every weekend.

Student accommodation can put in to temporarily change the purpose of their building - be that tourist oriented AirBNB, accommodation for front line staff to be close to where they're posted, provide a temporary shelter for the homeless or even to add a massive extension onto the current building.

Planning isn't static but there is a process there for you to object to changes of planning and whatever you submit must be taken on board by the council in their decision.

The current setup is, if you don't object as part of the process then you have no right to complain after the fact, up to and including appealing to An Bord Pleanala (who have the power to completely overrule a council's decision, which they have done many times).

I personally don't see how that could change, otherwise, every grant of planning will have to have a holding phase clause to allow anyone who might want to retrospectively object to the grant. This will do absolutely nothing for the construction of badly needed homes in this country.

At the end of the day all the refugees fleeing wars etc that these student groups have been vocal about need somewhere to live also.

Unfortunately the situation at the moment means everyone can't be accommodated.

I saw that series of excellent tweets and it was great to see someone else document a bugbear of mine. I really really cannot understand why the council let its architects who are designing public realm install light fittings that it has zero intention of maintaining.

When they put the lights up on the Beckett bridge, my heart sank because I just knew they won't maintain them. Sure enough for fire fighters week, there was half a string not working.

To be fair, it's not just DCC, the dockland development authority are just as bad. Every single in ground light, bollard light at grand canal dock no longer works. The lights on the bridge flicker so much it's like a disco.

That's not how it works. There are only a handful of notified bodies and they are state agencies and An Taisce.

They had their opportunity to object and they missed it. No point crying about it now.

While you are right that they missed their opportunity, the system should be changed. Students should not suffer homelessness because last year's student union wasn't paying attention.

If they create a distinct category that is more likely to get planning in the first place, then that category should have some notification provision attached to it