Ires Reit to seek fast-track permission for Rockbrook development

The Republic’s biggest landlord could seek fast-track permission for a high-profile apartment development within weeks after getting the project through a key stage of the planning process.

Irish Residential Properties Real Estate Investment Trust (Ires Reit), which lets more than 2,000 homes, wants to build 428 apartments at Rockbrook in Sandyford, Dublin, where planners previously refused it permission for 452 dwellings.

An Bord Pleanála has paved the way for stock market-quoted Ires to seek fast-track planning permission for the 428 apartments following consultations with the company and Dún Laoghaire Rathdown County Council.

It is understood that Ires will formally apply for permission by the middle of next month to build the apartments under the fast-track scheme for large residential projects.

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This allows anyone seeking permission for developments of 100 or more homes to bypass local councils and go directly to An Bord Pleanála, following formal consultations.

The board must decide on whether to grant permission within 16 weeks, implying that Ires should know whether it has succeeded by mid-August at the latest.

No one can appeal An Bord Pleanála's decisions under the scheme, but it is possible to ask for a High Court judge to review them.

New proposals

Following consultations that began in January, the board deemed Ires’s new proposals for the site as a reasonable basis for a planning application.

An Bord Pleanála’s spokesman stressed that the consultation’s outcome did not guarantee that Ires would get permission for the Rockbrook development.

“It means that the next step for them is to make a formal application which will be advertised in the normal way,” he said.

Once Ires applies for planning permission, locals and other interested parties can make formal observations on its proposals.

The council refused Ires permission to built 456 apartments on the site in 2017, a decision that An Bord Pleanála subsequently upheld, saying that the proposal was “contrary to the statutory development plan for the area”.

Ires had originally sought permission to build 492 new homes there, but cut this after locals expressed concerns at the height of the proposed development.