Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I think it would be fair to describe the Cherrywood development as a flagship development for Ireland presenting itself as a place where there is quality of life, there is the housing we need and where you have all the amenities, facilities, infrastructure and so on necessary for a place where people can live and work. It is the biggest residential development in the country. I do not like the word "competition" because I do not think running an economy is like running a race against somebody else or playing a football match. It is about having a quality of life, infrastructure, housing, services and so on. At one point Cherrywood was in public hands when we had to nationalise it through NAMA. We flogged it back off to international companies like Hines, which have developed it. However, key to the Cherrywood development was the promise - in the strategic development zone planning - that there would be a town centre with medical facilities, shops, supermarkets and all the amenities you would expect. It was going to be a ten-minute town. You would not have to drive anywhere because everything would be there. It now turns out that Hines the developer, which has made massive profits from flogging off the houses and apartments there, and which are astronomical in price, has now decided it is not building the town centre. It is just not building it. The whole development hinged on this town centre, and now Hines has decided it is just not profitable and they are not going to bother building it. It is trying to put the Government and the people over a barrel, I presume to try to get more public money. It already got lots of LIHAF funding to build the parks and infrastructure. In short, this cannot be allowed. That town centre has to happen, so I am asking for intervention from the Government to make sure it does.

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