18 October-November 2025
Flynn, negotiting with grdí on York St (right)
Pork on York
Dublin City Council
must not sell out the
public domain of a
vulnerable community
off St Stephen’s Green
to facilitate RCSI
branding, but defer to
elected representatives
and finally assert the
public interest
F
or decades the Royal College of
Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) has
dominated York Street: an oversized
car park, bulky institutional blocks
and corporate frontage looming
over Mercer House flats, abrading privacy and
sterilising a once-vibrant corner beside
salubrious St Stephen’s Green. The old tension
of institutional expansion versus municipal
stewardship is now back. On 9 September the
RCSI, with a discreet nod from some City
ocials, returned to the South East Area
Committee with a “public-realm vision” for the
half of York Street it deigns to share.
The geography
York Street runs east–west between St
Stephen’s Green South and Aungier Street,
stitched by narrow lanes — Proud’s Lane and
Johnson’s Place — and flanked at the Aungier
St end by Glovers Court and Mercer House
flats. RCSI’s historic home is at 123 St
Stephen’s Green; its library block sits at 26
York Street; the car park and service bays are
behind. The east of the street is the College’s
desire line; the west is the residents’ front yard.
Background
In 2009 the then Lord Mayor, Eibhlin Byrne,
opened new apartment blocks at York Street,
hailed by some as flagship social housing. The
older Georgian blocks, distinguished but
unsafe, might have been refurbished. Instead
By J Vivian Cooke
NEWS
the redevelopment installed the architecture
of containment and “othered” residents whose
previous spaces were generous.
Crucially, more than half of the east end was
sold to the plutocratic RCSI for swanky
facilities. The College operates much like a
business (not least in Saudi Arabia), though a
not-for-profit charity. It is not a hospital.
The quid that lost its quo
The sweetener was community access to
RCSI’s facilities. A signature all-weather
rooftop pitch was promised as compensation
for lost green space. By stealth the community
interest was subordinated. The pitch vanished
via a planning variation. Access as of right
became an elastic “outreach programme” in
which locals might use facilities only when the
College did not need them. RCSI provided DCC
around €400,000 in “community gain” but
otherwise kept integration tidy and
arm’s-length.
Disconsolate residents only learned on
opening day there would be no pitch. The new
blocks, handsome from the street, raised
internal worries: unsafe windows, scalding
taps, and roof gardens swiftly closed by DCC.
The community was further fractured by
dierential treatment: homeowners at Cue
Lane reportedly got more than twice what
local-authority tenants saw. RCSI insisted its
tenant deals were confidential; many felt
stampeded.
2019 to now
Since 2019 RCSI has doubled down on capital
projects, including a seven-storey new building
at 118 St Stephen’s Green, intensifying daily
crossings and service trips. The car park
remained a climate-negative contradiction of
the College’s public-health rhetoric.
Cobtribution
Compromisingly, RCSI recently contributited
€100,000 to Dublin City Council for works to
York Street before either RCSI or Council
Management informed the elected Councillors
of the donation, or of the attendant agenda.
The 2025 presentation and current
proposals
On 9 September 2025 RCSI presented a three-
phase plan to “regenerate” York Street and
ultimately render it a pedestrian plaza. The
College called the street a pedestrian corridor
and said it was severed by mostly pass-
through trac. Slides claimed more than
5,000 daily peak pedestrian movements
between 123 St Stephen’s Green and 26 York
Street — set to rise with the imminent opening
of 118 St Stephen’s Green.
Stage 1 (“low-hanging fruit”): heavy
planters with seating on the wider north
footpath, soft landscaping to the south, tree
pruning, de-cluttering, and two new pedestrian
crossings aligned with the College’s desire
lines — handy for white coats, less so for
residents down the street. Measures were
touted as “modest and reversible.”
Medium-term (1–5 years): upgrades to
Proud’s Lane and tighter trac restrictions.
Long-term (5–10 years): full
pedestrianisation, a plaza, and a branded
“RCSI Medical University Quarter” at the St
Stephen’s Green end — an ownership blur
between public street and private campus.
The slides rested on four principles: “world-
class public space”, “restrict traffic”,
“pedestrian priority”. and “green
infrastructure”. Presenters led by Rowan
Baxter, Director of Estates, stressed two
centuries of RCSI presence, current numbers
(about 8,700 students and 1,500+ sta) and
capital investment exceeding €300m since
2014: metrics designed to impress quantity-
over-quality-fetishising City Management.
The strting point
October-November 2025 19
publish monthly for a year; use the data to
block rat-runs and improve permeability for
prams, wheelchairs and older people.
Car-park reversal plan. Cap and then reduce
RCSI car-park capacity; align pricing and
access with climate and health goals; add cycle
facilities and managed delivery bays.
Privacy and light mitigation. RCSI to fund
louvres, planting, glazing tweaks and façade
fixes where its buildings overlook or darken
flats; publish daylight/overshadowing/noise
assessments.
Binding community-use agreement. Convert
airy “outreach” into contract: guaranteed,
bookable hours for residents at no cost;
penalties for curtailment; a small grants
scheme run by an independent panel.
Fix existing defects. DCC to audit safety
issues in public housing and publish a remedial
programme with dates and budgets.
Two tests should govern every decision:
•
Mobility. Does the move measurably
improve comfort and safety for the most
vulnerable — children, older people,
wheelchair users and those with prams —
without spawning rat-runs or confusing
desire lines?
•
Legitimacy. Have residents, traders and
street users been genuinely involved with
documentation published and decisions
explained?
If York Street passes both, the evolution can
be generous rather than extractive. The
College gets a coherent, walkable threshold.
The neighbourhood gets shade, seating and
safer crossings. The city gets a public space
that expresses climate resilience, health,
accessibility and culture — done by the book,
not by the back door.
Nobody is arguing against improvement,
just enclosure. York Street must be a residential
street with a university on it, not a university
campus that tolerates residents. The dierence
is the distance between a democracy and a
brand manual. DCC should draw the line on
surrendering the public domain, on ‘othering’
vulnerable inner-city residents — clearly,
publicly, now, and forever.
City Council reaction
Chair Councillor Dermot Lacey, and other
councillors who spoke, were mostly
circumspect. All regretted the absence of
engagement with local councillors before the
College arrived with drawings. Lacey put it
crisply: he liked the likely result, but not how
RCSI had got there.
Councillor Mannix Flynn, reared in Mercer
Street flats, delivered the sharpest critique.
The plan initially looked like part of the
Council’s Glovers Court retrofit, he said; but
York Street is a public, residential domain and
leadership must sit with the City Council, not a
private college. As local councillor he had not
been engaged; DCC ocials and RCSI, he said,
excluded members and residents from the
“meetings” they cited. He warned of campus
creep — echoes of Docklands Big Tech and
Trinity’s expansionary instincts; recalled the
vanished rooftop pitch and evaporated
“shared” facilities; and pointed to the multi-
storey car park as a health and climate
contradiction. He would oppose the scheme
unless re-anchored under DCC control, with
structured engagement and alignment with
works at Glovers Court and Mercer Street.
Questions from Councillors covered student
accommodation, timetables for
pedestrianisation, costs, and opportunities for
community rooms, STEM pathways and school
access to galleries. The constant theme: even
“low-hanging fruit” must pass through normal
governance so locations, materials and
operations are agreed publicly.
Officials dubbed the pitch a “vision”.
Medium- and long-term changes, they said,
require full legal procedures. They promised a
quick local meeting with RCSI, councillors and
community representatives to review Stage 1.
New crossings usually go through the Trac
Advisory Group (TAG), a structured process
that takes weeks, not days.
Which is why Councillor Flynn was appalled
to find workers from Citius on site the very next
day, unwilling to say who was paying them,
pushing ahead with the RCSI-focused
crossings which have no utility for residents.
After two days of protest — and some Garda
attention — he secured a pause. The episode
reeked of bad faith from ocials and their
contacts in RCSI: City Management had
indicated works would take weeks, yet crews
appeared overnight. It exemplifies how the City
indulges business while treating democracy
pursued through Councillors as optional, and
residents as an afterthought.
What the RCSI buildings do to
the Corpo flats
To residents the College is not benign
neighbour but alien developer: façades
peering into living rooms; lecture-time surges
swamping narrow pavements; plant noise and
deliveries at awkward hours; light spill at
night; deepened winter shade. The car -park
lures vehicles that would otherwise stay away
— idling generates fumes and stress.
Overshadowing and overlooking erode the
dignity of home life in Mercer House and
Glovers Court. Windy corners discourage
lingering; children play less; older residents
walk less; sociability is thin.
The case against the RCSI York Street plan
Councillor Flynn told Village the plan would
divide York Street into haves and have-nots:
“It primarily benefits RCSI’s students and
estate while harming a residential community
that has been ignored and undermined for
years. It has been and remains wholly
inappropriate to let RCSI turn parts of York
Street and the St Stephen’s Green area into a
de facto private campus. Over years, RCSI has
undermined the neighbourhood and public
health with an oversized car park and an
oversaturation of buildings to serve its
campus”.
What should happen now
If the City is serious about the public interest,
it must act plainly and procedurally. The steps
below are achievable and enforce the primacy
of a residential street over an encroaching
brand.
DCC should take the lead — formally. Adopt
a District Improvement Scheme and prepare a
Local Area Plan (LAP) that treats York Street as
a residential neighbourhood first; the College
an equal, rather than master.
Create a co-design forum. DCC-chaired, with
residents (tenants and owners), schools,
traders, disability advocates and RCSI. Publish
agendas, minutes and drawings. No
side-deals.
Pause private works in public space. Any
Stage-1 interventions — planters, pruning,
crossings — must be procured and delivered
by DCC after TAG review.
Traffic and pedestrian evidence.
Independent counts of pedestrians, cycles,
deliveries and trac before/after interventions;
Vision for York St: Councillors didn’t like how the RCSI got there

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