The Gallops Estate

Firstly, I would like to wish all the residents of the Gallops a Happy New Year from the Committee! We held our first meeting of 2018 last week and set out our agenda for the year.

This includes a number of new initiatives such as the opening of a PayPal account to allow us to accept donations through the website and also a lot of older ones that we have carried forward from last year. This is because it can take a number of months, and sometimes even years, to get certain issues addressed with the Council, however Dun Laoghaire/Rathdown is still one of the best councils in the country and we have a very good relationship with both councillors and department management and staff. We will continue to build on this in 2018 in order to improve the facilities in the estate.

Thankfully, reported crime levels in the Dundrum/Blackrock garda area have been falling for the past couple of years and the anecdotal evidence from residents would support this, particularly in the area of house burglaries which were a big concern for residents a few years ago. Initial reports from the Policing Forum that we attend on your behalf suggests that there have been a number of bicycle thefts from Luas stops in the first couple of weeks of 2018 so please take all necessary precautions if you are leaving a bike at a stop and report any suspicious activity immediately to 999.

Speaking of the Luas, I know there has been huge pressure on the trams at rush hour and people have had difficulty getting on them at the Gallops and Glencairn stops. This pressure will only increase when the developments at Clay Farm and Lisieux are fully occupied. We have raised this problem directly with Transdev, the Luas operators, and also with the Councillors and our local TD Shane Ross, who is the Minister for Transport. We will monitor developments to see what action is taken.

Finally, we have our first estate clean up scheduled for Saturday, February 10th, at 10.30 a.m. We meet at the playground and then cover as much of the estate as we can based on the number of residents that turn up to help. If you can spare 30 minutes then please come out and help us.

Kevin (on behalf of the Committee)