Everybody agrees that building on a floodplain is a bad idea. Our Irish and EU policies support this consensus, yet the developers of the former Bray Golf club lands in Bray, Co. Wicklow, Ireland, propose doing just that on an approximately 60m wide strip of land adjacent to the River Dargle. This area, a floodplain, allows flood waters to pass through and out of the houses in Little Bray eastwards to the sea, in the case of upland flooding. 

Flood defences have been built in the area but these defences have already failed twice on that site, and with rising sea levels, will inevitably do so again. If next time they fail upriver of our community, the flood waters will be trapped on our side of the defence walls and the waters' escape route to the sea will be more invaluable than ever.  

A building application has gone into Wicklow County Council that has so many concerning features in it - for residents upriver, for future residents on this land, for our mute swan colony of national and international importance, and for our town's dangerously overloaded traffic - that we cannot list them all here.

Instead we would appeal to you to read our submission to Wicklow County Council at https://savebray.ie/submissions and, if you agree with our arguments, sign our petition here to give your consent to add your name. Please do not sign without reading our submission, and please do not sign here if you are going to make an individual submission (for which we would be extra grateful!) as we do not want duplications that might invalidate our document.

We need many new homes built in Ireland, but we need safe homes. Help us to keep ours - and future residents in this development - safe, as well as our beautiful swans.