Rebecca Moynihan (Labour) | Oireachtas source

Today I bring to the attention of the House the provision of both cost rental and social housing in the old St. Michael's Estate, what is now the Emmet Road development project. In 2018, the then Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government, Eoghan Murphy, said this would be a flagship cost rental project in the city, with loans from the European Investment Bank, EIB, and funds from the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government to provide, on what was a social housing site, 70% cost rental and 30% social housing. It has always been understood that that site would be 100% public and affordable housing.

Last week, at the last minute, just before the planning application went in, Dublin City Council informed Inchicore Regeneration Consultative Forum, which is chaired very ably by Eamon Devoy and which includes councillors, local residents and members of the St. Michael's Estate Regeneration Board, that there was potential for 91 units to be sold on to a private developer as part of a development with the shopping centre and that was how it would fund the community facilities that need to go into a development that will 467 homes and might have a population of 1,000. That was never the understanding of anyone involved in the project in the last four years and is very concerning. I have raised the matter a couple of times in the House of how local authorities are in a stranglehold because there is no separate income stream for community facilities. For instance there is another regeneration project just down the road in St. Teresa's Gardens. I fought very hard for a pitch there when I was on Dublin City Council. In order to get this we needed to sell on a parcel of land. This arose again with the development of O'Devaney Gardens. Any community facilities need to be paid for. Dublin City Council, councillors and members of the community feel like they are forced to sell land in order to be able to pay for them. If we are doing flagship projects such as this it should be taken for granted that there will be funding for things like playgrounds, green spaces and things like community centres. That is an essential part of a working community. That this was landed on the people who worked so hard, like John Bissett, Rita Fagan and Eilish Comerford, who have been working on this for the last 20 years a week before planning was about to be submitted is a disgraceful treatment of the people who have been involved in the very detailed planning of this.