The construction of 383 apartments along the Grand Canal, on the southside of Dublin city, has been approved by Dublin city councillors.
More than 60 per cent of the homes are to be rented to low and middle-income workers under the State’s cost-rental scheme.
The development, Bluebell Waterways, will be located on the site of old water filtration ponds beside the canal’s fifth lock, formerly used by the Guinness brewery when its stout was made using canal water.
The almost three-hectare site in Dublin 12 is about 6km to the west of the city centre. The area has been dominated by industrial sites and older council housing, but is increasingly being developed for new apartment schemes due to its closeness to the city and transport links, including the Luas Red Line.
RM Block
The 383 apartments will be built by the Land Development Agency (LDA) and Dublin City Council (DCC) in four blocks of up to nine storeys, along with community spaces, a creche and allotments.
The site, owned by the council, is occupied by 37 social housing maisonettes from the 1950s. These are earmarked for demolition, with tenants to be offered homes in the new blocks.
Almost 40 per cent of the apartments will be for social housing, with the remainder available for cost-rental tenants.
While the rents for the Bluebell scheme will not be confirmed until it nears completion, nearby cost-rental developments in west Dublin have offered apartments at rents 30 per cent below market rates.
On Monday councillors across all parties raised concerns about the lack of “pepper potting” in the scheme, with the social housing and cost-rental tenants to live apart in separate blocks. Pepper-potting refers to the practice of having residents from different backgrounds living next to one another, rather than separately.
The council’s head of housing Mick Mulhern said the local authority would manage two social housing blocks and the LDA would manage two cost-rental blocks.
While there was an “appetite to do a mixed scheme”, in this case “we couldn’t possibly have DCC and the LDA managing individual units” in the buildings, he said.
The Grand Canal was created in the late 18th century as a transport route and to provide a reliable water source for Dublin and the Guinness Brewery at St James’s Gate, where there was a harbour, a city basin and the canal’s original terminus. The water was used to make Guinness into the 20th century.
Separately, councillors accused Minister for Housing James Browne of “gross overreach” and having a “brass neck” in directing the city council to zone more land for housing.
Just over a month ago Mr Browne issued new guidelines to all local authorities, telling them to reopen their development plans and rezone significant additional lands for housing.
Mr Browne wrote to Lord Mayor of Dublin Ray McAdam, stressing “immediate action” was required to identify more residential land for zoning.
However, in a report to councillors on Monday, assistant council chief executive Tony Flynn said there was already sufficient capacity in the development plan to meet the city’s housing needs.
Mr Flynn said plans to redevelop the Dublin Industrial Estate in Glasnevin would provide additional homes “in excess of the baseline housing growth requirements”.
Sinn Féin councillor Mícheál MacDonncha said it was “ironic and bizarre” the Minister was issuing edicts on the development plan when he was “impoverishing” the council’s ability to provide homes. “He has a brass neck,” he said.
Green Party councillor Claire Byrne said Mr Browne’s intervention was a “gross overreach”.
Social Democrats councillor Catherine Stocker said the Minister was “trying to point the finger in the wrong direction” to deflect blame on to the planning and zoning process for the failure to deliver housing.
