Given the current housing emergency, it is hardly surprising that Minister for Housing and Planning Simon Coveney would intervene over height restrictions on new apartment buildings in "low-rise" areas of Dublin city. A departmental letter to Dublin City Council warned that the overall effect of these restrictions – adopted by councillors last May as an amendment to the draft city development plan – would "seriously affect the practical delivery" of new housing at a time when it is so urgently needed.
What the majority of councillors did made no sense in reality. Responding to conservationists’ concerns about the impact of high-rise schemes on the intimate human scale of Dublin, they voted to cap apartment buildings’ heights at 24 metres (78ft) in designated “low-rise” areas of the inner city, while leaving unchanged a current city plan provision that permits new office blocks in the same areas to rise to 28 metres. This was a confused response to legitimate fears that the city could lose one of its essential qualities.
The Minister must be well aware that the draft city plan designates four areas for high-rise development (more than 50 metres) – around Connolly, Heuston and Tara Street rail stations as well as a "cluster" in the Docklands – and nine other areas for "mid-rise" schemes (up to 50 metres); these include the Digital Hub and Saint Teresa's Gardens in the south inner city as well as Ballymun, the "North Fringe", Clonshaugh, Pelletstown, Park West/Cherry Orchard, Naas Road and Oscar Traynor Road. In other words, there is already ample scope for high-rise in Dublin.
Mr Coveney’s intervention appears designed to pave the way for a virtual free-for-all on building heights, even in designated “low-rise” areas, where the predominant form of housing, at two or three storeys, would be disrupted or even replaced over time by significantly taller buildings. His department would be better employed concentrating on the need for greater urban density, which can be achieved at relatively modest heights even in low-density suburban areas, rather than aiming for a high-rise future everywhere.