Blog 14_ New Land

Met one NUI graduate at a gathering over the last few days who has been working in Hong Kong for the last five years and was just back with his Hong Kong native wife. He said he was very impressed with my Housing proposals especially going outside the box to use reclaimed land. He mentioned that 25% of all developed land in Hong Kong is reclaimed from the sea, amounting to some 7,000 hectares - my proposal is a lot more modest, at a mere 130 hectares.

He asked why I was suggesting to use the sea area off Fairview for Housing and I explained it was because most of the land in that area is already reclaimed land. Eastwall was reclaimed from the sea in the 19th century and Fairview Park is built on land reclaimed in the 20th century. The port area of Dublin has been continuously extended over the last 100 years by reclaiming land from the sea. Hence it seemed natural to focus on that area because it could be seen as continuing a process that had been going on for centuries; the next step being to reclaim the land stretching out from Fairview Park to the tip of the port.

The conversation moved on to climate change and we both agreed that, at the present slow rate of progress, the global transition to net zero is likely to take up to 100 years and consequently it would be prudent to start taking some protective measures now. I explained that that was another reason why I selected the sea off Fairview. It's because that whole area is shown as particularily vulnerable to future flooding due to climate change with the increased frequency of storm surges and the expected sea level rise of 0.5m to 1.0m.

The Housing proposals include the building of a sea wall which will protect the new homes and the whole of the North City. Of course the rest of the Dublin coastline (and later our other cities) would, in due course,also need protection so this would be the first part of a "Cathedral Project" ie one taking several political cycles to complete. He went on to ask how that would all be paid for and I told him about the Government's Infrastucture, Climate and Nature Fund and that I was expecting that a portion of that would be used to complete the wall and reclamation works.