The sale of Clancy Barracks could yet turn into a bit of a fiasco now that Dublin Corporation has put down a marker on its plans to put social or affordable housing in the army complex.

City manager John FitzGerald may have scared off some of the city's high-flying developers by announcing that the corpo will "probably" pitch for the barracks when it goes to tender through Hamilton Osborne King. The local authority has valued the barracks at £25 million (€31.74m). This is well short of the amazingly high £40 million (€50.79m) pegged on it by the Valuation Office, but to be sure of getting it the authority will probably offer a few million more than the £25 million.

With over 6,000 families on the waiting list for housing in the city it seems amazing that the State should force the corpo into bidding for public property so that the Defence Forces can re-equip itself with new guns. In the meantime, don't be surprised if the Department of Defence announces that one of the conditions of sale will be that up to 40 per cent of the site will be set aside for social and affordable housing. With the corporation clearly wanting to up the stakes, it was hardly an opportune time yesterday for the Irish Home Builders Association to try to persuade Fianna Fail to reduce the 20 per cent allocation. The party, it seems, was having none of it in view of the fall-off in house-building operations around the country.