Permission given for €65m Pelletstown development

An Bord Pleanála has granted permission for a €65 million development of more than 300 homes along the Royal Canal in Dublin, despite the area being identified by the Dublin Housing Taskforce as having infrastructural deficits.

Nama Receivers for Capel Developments sought planning permission from Dublin City Council for 318 homes – 176 apartments and 142 houses – in Pelletstown, an area between Ashtown and Cabra designated for residential growth. Last March the council granted permission, omitting two floors and nine apartments from one block.

The Royal Canal Park Community Association, representing local residents, most of whom live in recently built apartments, appealed against the development on the grounds that new homes should not be permitted because facilities promised for the new town, including schools and a railway station, have not been built.

Lack of infrastructure

The Dublin Housing Taskforce and Dublin City Council have identified Pelletstown, just 4km from the city centre, as one of six areas in the city with the potential to accommodate new large-scale housing development, but which are constrained by a lack of infrastructure. Specifically Pelletstown is pinpointed as needing a €4 million rail station.

The station, which was granted planning permission in October 2014, would be about 800m east of the boundary of the site. The National Transport Authority in its Transport Strategy for the Greater Dublin Area 2016-35 mentions Pelletstown as a "likely location" for a new station, but gives no specific commitment to its funding.

Lost opportunity

In recommending a grant of permission for the Capel Developments’ scheme, the board’s inspector, Donal Donnelly, did not raise the lack of a new station at Pelletstown as an issue of concern.

“My outstanding concern relates to density and what I consider to be a lost opportunity to provide at least 50 additional dwellings in close proximity to a rail node,” he said.

He also noted the high number of suburban-style houses in the development. The board in its ruling approved 317 of the 318 homes.

In 2000 the council drafted a plan for the development of Pelletstown with the intention of reducing “unsustainable trends towards commuting and urban sprawl” and providing “housing at higher densities”.

The Government’s Construction 2020 strategy, published in May 2014, included an initiative called “kick-start” which allowed local authorities to relax residential density guidelines in certain areas seen as having the greatest potential to provide new homes.

The initiative applied to Adamstown in west Dublin, Cherrywood to the southeast of the county, Baldoyle in Fingal, and Clongriffin and Pelletstown in Dublin city. After a hiatus of several years the city council began to receive planning applications for housing in Pelletstown.