Author: Claire

This is the view from the North Beach of Greystones Harbour yesterday evening. The pier was built in the 1800s and the houses date back to the Victorian era.

The harbour has fallen into disrepair and the place needs a bit of a facelift, it’s sad to see how rundown it is. However, yesterday plans went through for a €300m marina development including a new town square, four and a half storey buildings with 375 apartments and shops, and berthing for 230 boats built by a partnership between Wicklow CoCo and private developers. You can follow this LINK to see architectural drawings of how it will look. I’ve heard it described as using an atom bomb to kill a fly…or, on the other side, that Greystones will be the envy of all other coastal towns.

This marina isn’t an overnight development. They’ve been trying to push it through for about eleven years now but it has been very controversial. Even many who would say they are in favour of a marina development of some kind say that this proposal is just too much. Over 6000 objections to the new marina were submitted and alternative smaller suggestions were put forward but yesterday the announcement was made that the original plans are going through anyway with no scaling back at all.

It kind of makes you feel quite helpless really. I know for me as a newbie in Greystones, even trying to understand what’s going on is difficult because it’s such a flashpoint that any discussions can get heated pretty quickly.

So I just take photos.