PLANS TO REZONE industrial lands in Dublin allow for housing in four areas of the city have been revealed by city councillors. 

A Dublin City Council month meeting last night was informed of over 270 hectares within the M50 which are potential “new growth areas”. These lands are currently zoned for industrial use. 

These lands are located in the following areas:

• Jamestown Business Park, Finglas Business Centre
• Dublin Industrial Estate (DIE), Ballyboggan Road
• Oscar Traynor Road, Malahide Road, Coolock Drive and Malahide Road Industrial Park, and Newtown Industrial Estate
• Kylemore Road, Park West Road (including small Z7 landbank) and Inchicore Works and Lands East of Kylemore Road

City planner John O’Hara said the plans were the start of a process that could provide 17,000 to 20,000 homes in 10 to 20 years time, RTÉ reported. 

The report delivered at the meeting last night noted that there will be implications to the rezoning of this land and that further planning will need to occur. 

“These lands are significant in scale, and a change to their use cannot be piecemeal. For these sites, the scale of the lands involved means that any change would need to be addressed within a more detailed planning framework,” the report said. 

Speaking to TheJournal.ie, Sinn Féin councillor Daithí Doolan, chairman of the council’s Housing Strategic Policy Committee, said these plans have been in the pipeline since 2004 and that they are “long overdue” but that he doesn’t think progress will happen “overnight”. 

“It’s long overdue, it’s very, very welcome. It should be positive if we do it the right way,” Doolan said.

He said that “we don’t want to give a blank check to private developers” to develop areas “that don’t meet the needs of local communities”. 

Doolan said that the council needs to make sure the lands provide sustainable and affordable housing. He also said that community and recreational facilities need to be made available in the areas. 

Similar to Doolan’s comments, the report noted: “Changes for such large sites need to be framed around the development plan policies of place-making, creating/expanding amenities, examination of community needs, including schools provision; movement and connectivity and providing a good range of local services and ensuring quality employment locations proximate to where people live.”