A State-owned south Dublin city site, valued at around €15 million, will be put on the market in the coming weeks in the first of a series of sales of State assets under a new capital fund-raising programme.
The former maintenance headquarters of the Office of Public Works (OPW) at Lad Lane, off Baggot Street, will be sold to fund a range of new purchases, including sites for new Garda stations and office space for the National Educational Psychology Service (NEPS).
Announcing the sale yesterday, the Minister of State with responsibility for the OPW, Mr Tom Parlon, said the one-acre site, which was zoned for residential use, was expected to raise a "substantial eight-figure sum . . . in excess of €10 million".
Several other properties are to come onto the market in the coming months, and some of them will be "even more substantial" than the OPW site, according to the Minister.
The move follows an audit which began last November of the OPW's property portfolio, which is valued at €2.5 billion.
Mr Parlon stressed that while it was seeking to maximise value from properties it was "certainly not going to sell something that we will have to buy back".
The Labour Party's spokesman on environment, Mr Eamon Gilmore, expressed scepticism on this point, saying it made "no sense" to proceed with the sale of State assets when local authorities were desperate for land for social housing programmes.
Also calling for the land to be converted for "valuable public purposes", the Green Party's finance spokesman, Mr Dan Boyle, said the assets sale plan "smacks of gross short-termism".
Mr Parlon said local authorities would be consulted on sales, adding that social housing needs "will be kept on board".
However, "this particular site, in terms of its location and its zoning, isn't suitable (for social housing). But whatever developer has to apply for planning permission will be obliged to comply with the rules laid down for social and affordable housing."
The Dublin site was identified in an audit of State assets which began last November. The 30-40 maintenance engineers who used to work there have been relocated to Collins Barracks at a cost of €500,000.
Mr Parlon said the proceeds of the sale would go not only to the Garda and NEPS building programmes but also to buying out long-term leases which could "save money down the road". He noted that almost a quarter of the total Dublin leasing market was currently taken by the OPW.
As well as sales, he noted, the "portfolio transformation" would include joint-ventures and land swaps.
He added he would like to see local authorities, health boards and semi-State bodies incorporated into the audit as "we have reports of several State bodies that have very, very substantial assets in terms of land and buildings that are underused at the moment".
