Republican News · Thursday 29 March 2001

[An Phoblacht]

Strategy will only prolong Dublin's housing crisis

Last week, Dublin City Corporation gathered to discuss the city's new housing strategy, due to be launched for public consultation during the coming weeks.

Dublin's Big Eight Landowners

There is a crisis in housing in Dublin City for one simple reason. Eight landowners control the vast majority of development land in Dublin. The government and local authorities have allowed, if not positively encouraged this to happen.

Agricultural land sells for around £3,000 an acre. For potential development land, the price goes up to £30,000 an acre, or even £60,000 in premium spots like Malahide or Stepaside, or in the inner city.

But when this development land is zoned as residential and gets planning permission, an acre fetches between £1 million and £1.5 million. And, no mistake, this is what some of the fattest of brown envelopes were all about - securing planning permission off the councils.

The eight landlords, or property speculators, who own the bulk of development land in Dublin just have to sit on their assets. The greater the scarcity of houses and the longer they refrain from building, the higher is the annual increase in the value of their land assets. Heads you lose tails I win.

The biggest property developer in Business and Finance magazine's List of Eight is Gerry Gannon, who this year was seeking planning permission in Donaghamede for over 1,000 houses and 47 retail units. He doesn't build himself but sells the land on once it has planning permission. He is reported to hold over 800 acres banked around Dublin in prime sites in Malahide and Howth.

Michael Cotter of Park Homes, married into the McInerney family, owns an estimated 1,300 acres, which he bought in the 1960s. Then there is Micky Whelan, who builds, mostly in Lucan and Knocklion, with a drip feed of 200 houses a year, through his company Maplewood Homes.

The Bailey brothers, of Bovale Developments, under investigation in the Flood Tribunal for payments to planning officials, are reckoned to be the largest holders of land in the Finglas area. Then there is Castlethorn Developments. David Daly, who owns a 100-acre business park in Swords, has 300 sites in Mulhuddard and another 500-600 in Swords.

Seventh place goes to Joe Moran's Manor Park Homes and eighth place to Zoe Developments, which owns many small and valuable sites around the city centre. And then there are the also-rans, like Sean Mulryan of Ballymore Properties, who owns hundreds of acres in and around Dublin, and is also responsible for some of the largest commercial projects in London's Docklands.

Building a bungalow or a house costs between £40,000 and £50,000. Did you ever wonder where the other £100,000 on the buying price goes, the `little `extra' that covers the payment to wrest the land off the developer. This is the `little extra' coincidentally happens to price you and your partner out of the market to buy your own home?

This plan for the next four years covers new housing, the homeless and the private rented sector.

``With £6 billion to play with, you might reasonably expect major advances,'' says Nicky Kehoe. ``This means that the estimated 275 people who sleep rough on Dublin's streets every night wouldn't do so any longer; that the estimated 1,400 people who live, year after year, in B&Bs and emergency accommodation, would be housed, and also a major cut in the list of 7,500 people who wait and wait on the Corporation housing list.

``Instead, the plan projects there will be just the same number of people on the homeless list at the end of the four years. By 2003, there will still be people sleeping rough in the city. Nor does the plan introduce any rent control or even declare the council's intent to register all private landlords and force their compliance with quality and safety standards, or oblige them to meet their tax obligations.''

``I could decorate my house with all the corporation reports we had since 1985 on `solving' Dublin's housing crisis,'' says Christy Burke, leader of the Sinn Féin group on the Council. ``It's action we need. The problem is only increasing. We have to CPO land owned by the Catholic Church, the army, and other state bodies, like CIE. There is no other way to build the houses we need.''

Key to the Dublin housing strategy is the provision that 20% of all new housing should be allocated to `social or affordable housing'. This provision is laid down in the Dublin government's Planning and Development Act 2000, which the Supreme Court last summer declared to be consistent with the constitution.

Most councillors took the view, however, that the strategy did not meet the housing needs of the city. And each councillor proffered their estimate of how this figure should be split between `social' and `affordable'.

But as Councilor Larry O'Toole said: ``All housing should be affordable, not just some fraction of 20%. And it isn't affordable because of greed. Developers have held the city to ransom, and this latest plan is only poncing around the problem.''

He referred to the scandalous suggestion, proposed by the Corporation to ban marches and demonstrations outside the GPO. ``The tens of thousands of people of this city should be gathering outside of the GPO, with the Lord Mayor at their head, to protest this housing strategy as a solution to our housing crisis,'' he said.

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