The field on the Belgard Road owned by Roadstone
‘Serious concerns’ over rezoning land for housing
Plans by South Dublin County Council to rezone major tracts of land around the county for residential use have been met with “serious concerns” from councillors.
Elected members were presented with the council’s “emerging preferred options” of sites to be rezoned to address the shortfall in residential lands around South Dublin and to meet new housing targets set by the government in July last year.
They are proposing to rezone up to 203.5ha across 16 ‘landbanks’ around the county, with the potential to provide up to 9,000 new homes.
These include a major agricultural site on the western edge of Adamstown, the former Citywest Golf Course in Saggart, the former Finnstown Castle Golf Course, and the Roadstone site on Belgard Road West.
Following this proposal to councillors in December, the council is due to carry out assessments and refine the preferred options before launching a public consultation for the variation to the County Development Plan.
However, some councillors are opposed to both the sites suggested for rezoning and the timeline proposed by the council for making the variation to the CDP.
Lucan councillor Liona O’Toole (Ind) has criticised the 14-week timeline for the variation (four weeks for display and public submissions, four weeks for the report and six weeks for members to consider report), calling it “panic planning”.
“Councillors are being asked to consider these major changes within a much shorter timeframe than a normal County Development Plan review, which typically takes two to two-and-a-half years,” she said in a statement.
An aerial view of Finnstown Castle
“I have been very clear with the Chief Executive that this feels like panic planning driven by ministerial pressure and that approach risks long-term damage to our communities and to future generations.”
She and Cllr Vicki Casserly (FG) voiced their reservation to the number of proposed sites close to Lucan, Newcastle and Adamstown, as these areas have already “played a massive part in supporting major housing growth over the past 10+ years, particularly through Adamstown SDZ and Clonburris SDZ and surrounding developments,” according to Cllr Casserly.
“I will categorically and unconditionally oppose development on some proposed sites that SDCC are considering to recommend a rezoning where infrastructure is already under significant pressure or where the loss of valued green space would impact the community,” Cllr Casserly said, calling the proposal to rezone lands at Finnstown Castle for 1,000 housing units “particularly ludicrous in that it would destroy the green belt buffer to the Adamstown SDZ”.
Cllr O’Toole noted that the lack of “critical infrastructure proposals” to go hand in hand with the residential proposals “only reinforces the imbalance between housing ambition and infrastructure delivery”.
Roadstone were approached by The Echo for comment on the use of their site on the Belgard Road West, which the council had indicated could provide up to 1126 dwellings, but had not replied by time of printing.
Firhouse-Boherbreena councillor Emma Murphy (FF) said that there is an onus on the council to meet “social and community infrastructure demands in tandem with house building”.
She noted that one proposal for 634 homes on a site off the Edmondstown Road is a huge proposal for “an already creaking community infrastructural system, physical infrastructure system, road infrastructure system and social infrastructure system”.
“We’re looking for a model where the community infrastructure isn’t built retrospectively, it’s built in tandem, and each of those proposals has to be done on a case-by-case basis,” she said.
No date has been set yet by the council for the public consultation.
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