A deadline of mid-December has been set for the completion of 131 modular houses for homeless families in new tender documents issued by Dublin City Council.
On Tuesday, the council cancelled its previous tender for "rapid build" prefabricated houses on vacant council lands in Finglas, Darndale, Cherry Orchard and Drimnagh.
The tender had required the houses to be in place by June. In its cancellation notice, the council said it had received an “insufficient number of applicants who confirmed they would be able to meet the deadline in order to conduct a competition.
“The council considers that the deadline is no longer achievable.”
As reported in The Irish Times, the deadline for completion of the houses had been pushed back until the second week in December.
Separate dates
In a statement on Wednesday, the council said it was inviting a new competition for the 131 homes.
While the cancelled tender had advertised the provision of housing on the four sites as a single development to be completed by June 30th, the new tender would split the sites into four lots with different completion dates for each sites.
The timelines for all four sites were “working towards the completion of all units by autumn 2016”, the statement said.
However, in the new tender documents issued by the council, a deadline of December 12th has been given for the completion of all 131 houses.
Only one site has an autumn completion deadline – Cherry Orchard in Ballyfermot which would accommodate 24 homes, the smallest of the sites.
The tender sets a date for having the houses erected on the site and available for occupation by October 17th.
The next site due for completion is the “convent lands” on Knocknarea Road in Drimnagh, identified in the tender as Mourne Road.
This site will have 29 houses and is due to be finished by November 7th.
The two other developments, both on the north side, have December deadlines.
A site at Belcamp, off the Malahide Road in Darndale, has been identified for 38 houses scheduled for completion by December 5th, while the largest of the four sites, St Helena’s Drive in Finglas, has a tender for 40 houses with a completion date of December 12th.
The houses will all be two-storeys with a mix of two-bed houses for a family of four and three-beds for a family of five.
Meanwhile the council said the first 22 modular houses at a site on Balbutcher Lane in Ballymun, under construction since last November, will be finished by the end of this month.
The houses were to be delivered by Christmas using “ultra-accelerated procurement”.
However last December, days before they were due for completion, the council said they would not be ready until January, blaming protests at the site in November and bad weather in December for the delay.
