Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 23 January 2024

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government

Update on Affordable Homes, Public Lands, Strategic Planning and Projects: Land Development Agency

Mr. Phelim O'Neill:

St. Kevin's is obviously a very challenging site that we took over from the HSE. We carried out a very significant programme of enabling works to de-risk the overall project. Those enabling works have been completed. As I am sure the Deputy will have seen, the St. Kevin's Hospital building itself, which was badly damaged by fire a number of years ago, required significant stabilisation to stop it falling in on top of itself. As Mr. Coleman mentioned, we are delighted that we have had a main contractor on site for the past four to five months and units are being delivered. The foundations of new homes are already in and the rising walls are coming out so we are very confident that the target of early 2025 will be met despite a number of challenges on site from knotweed to asbestos to environmental challenges. Thankfully, we have overcome all of those. One of the critical infrastructure projects Irish Water has been delivering for the north side of the city involved the St. Kevin's site. As Irish Water has completed that work from the Lee waterworks up to the reservoir, all of those challenges have been overcome and I am pretty confident that we have a clear road ahead of us for unit delivery in 2025. We expect to market those units in quarter 3 of this year.