Dublin City Council will not be changing its housing targets despite Government directions ordering an “urgent and immediate” review of land zoning in the 2022-2028 development plan.
In a move that will come as a blow to some developers banking on the rezoning of their sites, assistant council chief executive Tony Flynn said there was already sufficient capacity in the development plan to meet the city’s housing needs.
In addition, Mr Flynn said, plans to redevelop the Dublin Industrial Estate in Glasnevin would provide additional homes “in excess of the baseline housing growth requirements”.
Minister for Housing James Browne just over one month ago issued new guidelines to all local authorities telling them to reopen their development plans and rezone significant additional lands for housing.
RM Block
The guidelines directed local authorities to plan for a national “baseline housing growth requirement” of 55,000 per year, but also to zone enough for “an additional 50 per cent headroom” Mr Browne said, “enabling zoning for a total of 83,000 units per annum”.
Mr Browne subsequently wrote to Lord Mayor of Dublin Ray McAdam stressing “immediate action” was required to identify more residential land for zoning.
“The measures we are requesting your local authority to take are not only urgent, but they are essential for the scaling up in home-building,” the letter said.
“Given the urgency, your authority should now commence the process of revising and varying the development plan against the new housing growth requirements as quickly as possible,” he said.
“Your role as a Lord Mayor of Dublin and that of your fellow councillors is pivotal in addressing our housing crisis, and the critical task immediately ahead of us is ensure that the capacity in the development plans to meet the housing need is brought up to date as quickly as possible.”
In a report be presented to councillors on Monday, Mr Flynn said the council’s planning department had commenced an examination of the city’s core housing strategy.
“The key point emerging from the analysis carried out to date is that there is sufficient capacity within the existing core strategy on zoned and serviced housing land to meet the projected revised housing demand up to 2028.”
The planned new suburb at the Dublin Industrial Estate, Broombridge-Hamilton, would create additional capacity for up to 8,500 homes, Mr Flynn said, to “provide the additional headroom capacity as required by the guidelines, in excess of the baseline housing growth requirements”.
The council would separately propose more zonings “to account for further additional housing capacity requirements beyond 2028 as per the Minister’s request,” Mr Flynn said, but this was the scope of the current city development plan.
Mr Flynn’s report is likely to cause consternation among developers seeking to have their sites rezoned for housing.
A High Court challenge by developer Pat Crean against the validity of the city development plan which had “dezoned” his lands beside St Anne’s Park in Raheny was recently dropped in anticipation of the new guidelines.
Councillors had decided in 2022 to change the zoning of the 16.5-acre site, formerly part of St Paul’s College at Sybil Hill from residential to open space. Mr Crean had made multiple applications for large-scale apartment schemes on the land.
Mr Crean’s Raheny 3 Limited Partnership in 2023 initiated a judicial review of the validity of the development plan. The zoning change, it said, amounted to an “unjust and disproportionate attack” on the company’s constitutionally protected property rights.
The company, part of his Marlet group, recently dropped the case, with Marlet saying the Minister’s intervention “encouraging councils to rezone lands that are serviced and where homes can be built, was a key decision why we felt these lands now have a more straightforward path to follow”.
