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AS RENTS AND house prices continue to rise in Dublin City, the lack of housing supply continues to make an impact.
It is now time that we made better use of under used lands close to the city centre. That is why the Green Party is proposing that we regenerate lands at Broadstone in Phibsborough and Cathal Brugha Barracks in Rathmines.
Both sites are located within walking distance of centre Dublin and could provide land for thousands of decent homes for those most in need.
Cities must adapt or die
Cities must adapt or die if they don’t meet the needs of the people they serve.
Twenty years ago an ambitious master plan was approved for the Dublin Docklands. This led to thousands of homes and jobs being provided in an area of the city that was scarred by dereliction. We now need to look at other under-used State-owned lands and consider the development of similar sites elsewhere in the city.
These range from railyards to car parks, but these two sites controlled by the State could provide thousands of new homes. Not only would development be located within walking distance of schools, shops, pubs and churches, the sites also have the potential to provide sports, recreation and jobs for the wider community.
The Broadstone site, just south of Phibsborough is oozing with potential. The old railway station, closed to passenger traffic in the 1930s, and now serves as the headquarters of Bus Éireann. The surrounding lands are used for bus maintenance and parking.
Regenerating the south Phibsborough area
The station terminus was designed by John Skipton Mulvany and opened in 1850. The late architectural historian Maurice Craig said it is:
the last building in Dublin to partake of the sublime. It stands on rising ground, and the traveller who sees it for the first time, so unexpected in its massive amplitude, feels a little as he might if he were to stumble unawares upon the monstrous silences
of Karnak or Luxor… Much of the poetry of travel perished when the Broadstone was abandoned.
Both the building itself and the wonderful granite colonnade alongside could underpin the regeneration of this part of the city. With not one, but two newly opened Luas stations on the Green line, and the new DIT campus at Grangegorman alongside they are well placed for revitalisation.
It is now time that Minister Ross took an interest in the area’s regeneration, and moved bus depots such as these out to beside the M50 where they can better serve their staff, and customers.
Currently in the early morning bus drivers travel into town by car in order to drive buses out of town to suburban terminuses for the first bus of the day. It would be far better if such bus depots were moved out of city centre locations.
The Harristown Bus Depot near Dublin Airport shows how this can be achieved. In my day job lecturing at the Dublin Institute of Technology my students in Urban Regeneration showed that sites like these could provide new homes and spearhead the redevelopment of such areas.
Cathal Brugha Barracks
Cathal Brugha Barracks in Rathmines could also contribute towards tackling the housing crisis. Many of the buildings are in poor condition, and the site needs investment regardless of whether the defence forces stay on site or move. The question has to be asked though: do we need to have two military barracks in Dublin?
This could be an opportunity to move our soldiers and staff to the Curragh, and upgrade facilities there. This would then release a magnificent sixteen hectare (forty acre) site close to the city centre.
It also could house thousands of new residents and provide sports fields, parks and playgrounds in this part of the city. Clancy Barracks in Islandbridge set a precedent, and now houses hundreds of city residents in a well-designed environment on the south
side of the River Liffey.
Quality homes that would integrate people
Both Broadstone and Cathal Brugha Barracks could spearhead the government’s plans for new housing. Indeed they could act as a showpiece for a ‘cost-rental’ model of development that would provide quality homes that would integrate people on different incomes.
Instead of the segregated housing policies that we’ve had up to now this could provide quality housing for people from all walks of life. This could be an amazing opportunity to provide inclusive housing for all: from young families to empty nesters.
Master Plans should be developed for both of these sites, and a Regeneration Authority such as the Grangegorman Development Agency could be repurposed to guide their redevelopment.
Last week a Green Party motion before the Dáil proposed the redevelopment of the sites. With backing from Fianna Fáil, Sinn Féin, Labour and others, the motion passed. Now, it’s up to the government to take this vision on board, and start delivering high quality, affordable housing solutions.
Ciaran Cuffe is a Green Party Dublin City Councillor and runsa an MSc in Urban Regeneration at the Dublin Institute of Technology.
Provide homes for those who have contributed first and foremost to our economic recovery.
@Brían Ó Cionnaith: The already rich will always be first in the queue in ireland. you’ve nothing to worry about there. if you don’t look after the needy. it will cost you double in the long run. in one way or another.
@Brían Ó Cionnaith: and who would they be then? People who are 18-22? – because everyone else also contributed to the 10 year recession we had.
Do we hold interviews to ask them what they were doing in the run up to 2008 – how much they paid for their house, how much they borrowed, their credit card useage?
You haven’t really thought this through now have you?
@Sean Conway: The rich? The rich to people like you are the people who break their holes and make sacrifices every day to improve their situation by going to college, working and saving for a mortgage, doing without to pay their mortgage every month. Sacrifice things like holidays so they can pay into a pension and health insurance so they are not a liability to the state. And then people like you want to move in next door after doing F all.
@Stephen Winterson: My mortgage is paid for nearly ten years now. but people haven’t got that luxury now because of the policies of FG and their greedy buddies. i’ll be off on my usuall three holidays a year thank you very much.
@Brían Ó Cionnaith: The multinationals who don’t pay tax and employ most of the country?
@Brían Ó Cionnaith: What economic recovery?
@Brían Ó Cionnaith: Obviously your talking about all the public servants who bailed out the country and had to buy houses in the commuter belt
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I go our work my fingers to the bone and buy a house…..then the feckless, never worked a day in their lives, lot moves in next door. A real incentive to working hard and paying your way!
@Mary Murphy: You never stop with the slander and division. The “them and us” mantra.
@Dave Doyle: Slander is a false statement made with the intention to damage a persons good reputation. Sorry but you have lost me as to who I might be slandering. Unless of course you mean the ‘good’ reputation of the lazy and feckless. Nonetheless I am not making any division, you are welcome to move in next door. I will even (with your permission) call you comrade, as long as I am not paying for you to live there.
@Dave Doyle: Comrade Dave, a bit of integration seems to be high on your wish list. How about we park a few caravans and a nice family from our own ethnic minority on your doorstep?
@Mary Murphy: You can say all you like, but you’ll never disguise your snobbery, your prejudice, or your begrudgery.
@Dave Doyle: and you my friend will never disguise the fact that you think the country and other taxpayers owe you a luxury lifestyle you don’t deserve and don’t pay for.
@Mary Murphy: it’s a disgrace that it’s somehow inappropriate to state that people who work should and deserve to have a better standard of living than those who don’t.
@Theunpopularpopulist:
“…owe you a luxury lifestyle”? This phrse gets thrown around a lot by commenters…right along with “owe you free houses”.
Where is this mythical land of luxury lifestyles that people don’t pay for and free houses?
@Theunpopularpopulist:
Unless of course you are referring to the luxury lifestyles that our corrupt politicians think they are owed by the taxpayer. Right along with the corporations and VF’s who don’t pay taxes in this country. I guess you don’t begrudge them all the welfare you pay to line their ever expanding pockets.
@Mary Murphy: Are you Fred Jenson’s Mammy?
@Mary Murphy: You clearly don’t know these people next door, if they even exist… which they probably don’t.
The Greens can get lost. The reason we’re enjoying two hour commutes is because these clowns object to anything that’s more than four stories tall. While we have to preserve genuinely worthwhile architectural heritage, Dublin should be a living city that needs to work for the people living in it and not just a museum to be curated.
@The Solipsist: There is plenty of land on the dublin coastline that wouldn’t interfere with the dublin skyline. they could build skyscrapers as high as they like. what’s stopping them?
@Sean Conway: A planning system that allows everyone from lone nutters to electioneering senators to hold up all and any development “just because”.
@The Solipsist: The Greens object to high rise exclusively is it??
http://www.newstalk.com/Criticism-as-Leo-Varadkar-opposes-fourstorey-development-in-his-constituency
@Dotty Dunleary: Mainly the greens, Cuffe led the no high rise crew in Dublin City Council.
People who pay 52% tax and who’ll pay crazy mortgages do not want to live next door to people who contribute nothing either financially or socially.
My experience with social housing neighbours involves them dealing drugs from their garden, constant noise, loud TV’s and radios at all hours of the night and littering.
Enough is enough.
Those who pay the taxes should get the perks.
Develop these sites for housing by all means, but only for people who work in the city.
Housing a significant coterie of people who don’t work and who never worked close to the jobs while the people who do the work commute for hours is madness.
Living next to someone that doesn’t give a toss about work or society,, staying up all night with TV humming through the walls while try to sleep to go to work early next morning to keep a Langer in alternate live style doesn’t work ! being there done it.author hasn’t a f IN clue
The idea we can just build or redevelop houses for everyone that needs one is ridiculous. My local authority just announced 80 new social housing units at a cost of €237,000 each!! An acre of land and building a nice 4 bed detached house would be around the same as this. It cant and shouldnt be justified to sit at home, not work, have kids and obtain a house of this size. Myself and my partner both work, to obtain a €237,000 mortgage to build this social house would require us pay back €957 a month. Thats before upkeep, furniture, taxes etc, how can any agency or person advocate spending this type of money to facilitate those who have contributed least to the economy over the years.
I spoke to a lady recently who works for the government housing agency. She told me there are 30,000 empty local authority owned houses nationally that could be used to solve the housing crisis. But when offered, people are refusing g them because they are not located near their ‘ma’. One woman was ordered accomodation in a large appartment but refused it because she would have had to pay the heating bill.
This lady reckons that 75% of people on the housing lists are playing the system
I used to have sympathy for these folks. Not any more
There’s bugger all substance here – as usual *sigh*
We need inclusive housing for all incomes etc etc yaddayaddayadda – of course there’s no mention of how this would be accomplished. How you’d sell one house for x whilst giving the one to the right away and the one to the left at a fraction of the cost.
Utterly pointless diatribe – as usual
City centers are for commerce.
Dublin needs to expand outwards or upwards.
More apartments are needed at affordable prices.
@Martin Lintzgy: Extacty. Affordable apartments near the city center of a suitable height and density. Not rocket science and no need for years of half-assed talk about social engineering while we all sit in traffic getting older.
Sorry Ciaran but you had your chance when in government, people are just sick of these “great ideas” coming from rejected politicians trying to make themselves relevant again…all we’ll get from this proposal is another “working group” or if we are lucky an “expert working group”, then a plan to fill up another shelf and gather dust, until the “experts” need another job.
You had my attention until “Green Party”. These half wits will never see the light of day again.
@Ronan Sexton: as the ountry was crashing in 2008, the only item that they threatened to walk out of government was … stag hunting ….. !!!!!!!!
When is the talking going to end
@Shaun Gallagher: When the next recession happens and a chunk of the population emigrates.
@The Solipsist: very true
Happy enough with the division just the way it is….I didn’t work my ass off and buy a house for some waster to move in next door and devalue my property.
If you want it bad enough you will aspire to it and get it. If it’s given out for free people will continue to scrounge from others.
I caveat the above with the fact that there are people who are more that deserving of aid and support and who should get it. The problem is that the many who have no excuse except laziness and entitlement.
For those who are deserving integrate of course! For the rest do not!
Ciaran cuffe obviously knows very little about what agreements dublin bus had to make with drivers to get them to harristown
@Declan Leonard: that’s the same in every unionized job, workers are not willing to change til its forced upon them.
It’s a great story, but it’s fantasy fiction. The current government seems to be intent on making landlords providing rented property go bust. Why else would you introduce LPT, RTB fees, rent freezes, part 4 agreement increase from 4 to 6 years, tax rental income as “unearned income”, give no mortgage interest relief, insist on microwave ovens being provided and make it even more difficult to evict tenants who aren’t paying, force acceptance of HAP (after you’ve renovated to target executives) and then not build social housing? Seems the agenda is, give your property over to risky tenants, so we don’t have to build social housing. When you go bust, happy days, the vulture funds will profit. Forget about TD landlords, they’re not that stupid, more like TD vulture fund shareholders.
Urghhhh! More talk. They talk about sustainability, office space for tens of thousands in the docklands, with space for twenty five thousand workers under construction and virtually no residential being built. The ridiculous height restrictions and regulations meaning no affordable apartments are being built, for working people. The ridiculous height limitations and apartment regulations need to change; if all they result in, is nothing being built , except for high income earners …
Lots of opinions given on what we need but very little has changed!
The Green party? What they will come up with won’t be affordable to those that need a home the most. The usual suspects that slander and vilify the homeless, won’t be happy if any homes are made available to those in dire need of social housing.
Just more talk when action is what is needed.
I don’t want to live beside people on the dole or beside halting sites. I would imagine I speak for 99.9% of hard working taxpayers when I say that.
So many lazy assumptions here by the usual right wingers who are foaming at the mouth before sunrise. People who work qualify for social housing, or are you all too thick to do a bit of research.
You’re all so obsessed about the potential scroungers moving next door to you. Get a grip
@Stephen Carroll: yep, I think it’s if u earn under 25k for a single person you qualify and could be higher in Dublin. The ignorance of people is sickening. The seem to think they are so moral but really they are far from it believing that people who don’t have a mortgage should be denied basic human rights. What kind of warp minded people think like that. What would rather that they get no help and can die on the street? Very moral…..
@Stephen Carroll: They wouldn’t move in next door. It’s too far from the ma and doesn’t have the probber fazil-i-eeze.
We should become communists!
@Me_a_monkey: The people of eastern europe wish for them days back. a job for everyone and a home to live. basic human needs.
@Sean Conway: Dont be silly. I know you have a fondness for all things Lenin/ Stalin/ dictatorship of the proletariat but you’re talking nonsense.
@Honeybadger197: No he’s not.
@Honeybadger197: 100% correct Honey … but then, with 200 blinds in debt with a 7 billion plus INTEREST payments a year .. a housing, health crisis … could it be any worse …
Maybe Leo could get a tattoo of a red sock on his head like the Gorbo lad …
@Sean Conway: as somebody with direct experience of working in a number of eastern European countries, can I tell you that is a myth.
@Sean Conway: … and the 2:00am knock on the door when the State secret police come to take your wife, husband, child or yourself away for “Re-education”. The good old days indeed…
@Little Nero: Your looking at fargo too much.
Kieran Cuffe … another Green Loony .. the guy who got everybody to buy diesel cars … now belching toxic fumes NOx and soot …. adversely impacting on people’s health.
Dear Sir /Madam,
Hello , Are you interested to selling one of your kidney for a good amount of {3 crore 30 lakh ($350,000.00)} in India pls kindly Contact us now on our email: as we are looking for kidney donor, Very urgently who are group B,group A ,O ve and 0 ve.
Interested Donor should contact us now.
Best Regards:
DR Abdul Muniem
Medanta Hospital
Phone: 917395824687”
Whats-App: 917204167030
@TheSolopsist. Where did you get the notion that the Green Party were ever against proper buliding height in the city. They have been promoting higher densities for years.
Check out Leo Varadker TD and his objection to improper building height in Castleknock.
Build up not out. Dublin is growing like cancer,
Turn Cathal Brugha into a housing project?
The defence forces headquarters?
Where Michael Collins’ house is?
Where the most famous picture of him, was taken?
Where the defence forces chief of staff’s office, is?
I’m pretty sure that the building there are protected structures.
Also if you’ve driven by it recently, there is a huge amount of work being done to upgrade the facilities and accommodation there.
Our soldiers are the lowest paid public servants and you intend to increase their commute by pushing them out to the Curragh…where you also want over holders, who are illegally living in military properties, to continue to live without paying the state? Hands off. Build modern classy apartments like other major European cities and grow up.
Build up already….
have your say