Houses and apartments have mushroomed all over this Kildare town - but there's no park after 11 years
The community is angry because of the delay
Eleven years have passed since a need for a community park was identified in Sallins - but it still hasn’t been provided.
Local residents have again expressed frustration at the delays in building the long promised public park.
The Sallins Community Park Action Group say that following a campaign that saw local residents make over 2,000 submissions to Kildare County Council in 2015 little has happened.
A year later, in 2016, KCC bought 33 acres for the park and the Department of Culture, Communications and Sport approved a €3m grant under the Large Scale Sports Infrastructure Fund in November 2024.
But since then the Department has been “in an unending paper exchange with KCC.”
The group's chairperson, Fergus Carpenter, says that the level of checks and balances is “ridiculously lengthy” and KCC has built and managed numerous public parks and sports facilities and have considerable expertise in this area.
He said: “This is a greenfield site, all public consultations and planning permission processes have been completed some years ago, all stakeholders are eager to proceed and yet the council has to jump through the same hoops as a project as complicated as another recipient (Bohemians FC soccer club), which is a massive project in a built-up urban area.”
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He said there’s a need for a separate, more streamlined process for more straightforward projects such as this.
He said KCC should “(feel) very undermined by this unnecessarily hyper-vigilant approach from central government”.
He also pointed out that the€3mpromised in 2014 is now worth considerably less due to construction inflation costs adding “(this isn’t) in the best interests of the taxpayer.”
Mr Carpenter said there is a clear need for the department to look again at the guidelines.
“The lands were bought in 2016. Significant funding was announced in 2024. But the lands look exactly as they did in 2016.
“We’ve had a seven-fold increase in the population of our town since 2000 with no new social infrastructure provided – we need construction of our park to start in the coming weeks, not years.”
The SCPAG is supported by Sallins Community Council, Sallins Celtic, Sallins GAA, Sult na Sollán, Sallins Tidy Towns, Sallins Biodiversity Group, Sallins Scouts and Sallins Sunshine Club. It was established in September 2023