Sparks are flying in Killiney, south Co Dublin, where some residents are unhappy about plans to build 98 apartments under the affordable housing scheme, writes Tim O'Brien
Fancy a new, two-bedroom apartment on some of the State's leafiest - and most expensive - real estate, Killiney Hill in south Co Dublin? Neighbours include celebrity pop stars Bono, the Edge and Enya, eminent members of the Bar and the quietly, very rich. Yours for €299,000, and yes, that price includes a parking space.
No, it is not an auctioneer's spiel from some post-housing crash brochure.
After some poor publicity in an article on Tuesday regarding how local authorities have made more than €60 million by allowing property developers to buy out their affordable housing obligations, the Government's affordable housing initiative badly needs some credibility.
To some, that credibility deficit could be filled very nicely by plans for Kilmarnock, a Georgian mansion with Victorian extensions on a 3½-acre site on the corner of Military Road and Killiney Hill Road.
Builders Murt and Michael Doran of Ellen Construction responded to a call from the Government's Affordable Housing Partnership last year for submissions on how to increase the supply of affordable homes.
Based on a development of 140 apartments, Ellen said it was prepared to hand over 98 apartments, to be sold to people on the council's affordable homes applications list, for €299,000 each. The open-market price of the remaining apartments would be in the order of €550,000 each. The issue is to be decided by a vote of councillors on Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council when they meet in June. The local authority, which provided just 69 affordable homes across its entire south Co Dublin administrative area last year, has proposed changing the local zoning to facilitate the plan. It has acknowledged that the number of applications for affordable housing is about 3,500.
In addition, Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council was named in Tuesday's article, which divulged the figure of €60 million, as the State's second-highest recipient of "cash-in-lieu" from builders, netting €7.79 million between 2003 and 2006.
Under the Planning and Development Act 2000, builders can either hand over 20 per cent of new developments to their local authority or negotiate a cash payment instead. Perhaps not surprisingly, the cash payments have proved a popular alternative, but this has led to criticism of the scheme.
To Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown, the prospect of now getting almost 100 affordable homes in one deal, in this holiest of holy sites, must look like a godsend.
A godsend, too, for house-hunters who grew up in the area, where the population actually declined by 9 per cent in the 2006 census. The development site also ticks all the right boxes in terms of higher density along transport lines.
It is a short walk to Killiney Dart station and a 10-minute walk to the N11 Quality Bus Corridor. As an auctioneer might say, shops, schools and churches are all on your doorstep.
BUT IT IS certainly not being seen as a godsend by locals. About 250 submissions were received during public consultation. An analysis of them revealed that about 50 had been duplicated by e-mails and other communications, but, even so, 95 per cent were hostile to the development.
Opponents included a number of residents' associations, including the Killiney and Ballybrack Residents Association and the Killiney-Ballybrack Conservation Group.
The most positive submissions appeared to be from locals who said they really did not mind the development but requested the council do something for traffic management on the narrow roads.
The Killiney-Ballybrack Conservation Group submitted a considered and detailed letter of objection from spokeswoman Helen Dolan to the council's chief planner, Michael Gough.
Dolan's submission began by telling Gough the association "would be very grateful if you could read this submission in its entirety" and went on to rubbish the proposal on planning, conservation and heritage grounds before informing him that the association had already reached for its legal advisers.
Dolan told The Irish Times she had been angered by suggestions that the objections were based on snobbery. She said the association had been engaged in a campaign to have the area declared an area of architectural conservation, and that the current zoning - which the council now proposes to change - which forbids such development, was an integral part of the county development plan, which had more than enough land zoned to fulfil its housing strategy.
The affordable housing scheme was, she said, simply a ruse to "open up the area for development". She said the figure of 3,500 applications was wrong, maintaining that the number must include "social" housing, which is ordinarily provided by councils to those who cannot afford a house.
Dolan insisted that "only 900 people" were on the waiting list for affordable homes in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown. She drew attention to her submission, which states: "Of these 900, a significant number may be ineligible due to salary, duplication of applications over all the Dublin local authority areas, or other reasons.
"Whilst we have been unable to obtain estimates of eligibility for this county, according to a recent newspaper article it is estimated that in Dublin City Council, of the 7,200 people on the affordable housing panel, only about 3,000, or 42 per cent, are likely to be able to obtain a sufficient mortgage. People should be screened/qualified to ensure that they can actually afford an 'affordable' home before their names are put on lists. Otherwise the 'waiting lists' are meaningless."
Dolan also criticised Ellen Construction, which was responsible for the scheme that redeveloped the Killiney Court Hotel as private apartments. The builder was happy to pay the council cash-in-lieu on that occasion, she pointed out, and she wondered why there appeared to be a sudden conversion on his part.
"It is a fair question," Murt Doran of Ellen Construction told this newspaper. "It is about land prices. The hotel was already zoned. We built just 44 apartments and the land was really expensive - that is not workable for affordable homes." Doran said to transfer eight apartments to the council at cost would have worked out too expensive for the applicants and the council had a better option in taking a payment of €1.3 million, with which it could obtain housing elsewhere. What was different about Kilmarnock was that the land was not zoned residential, and so had been acquired less expensively. The number of apartments, at 140, also achieve economies of scale, he said, and the affordable housing scheme was about passing on those savings to "nurses and teachers".