Affordable housing will never be delivered in Dublin City unless there is a change in Government policy and the State invests in its provision. 

O’Devaney Gardens is a 14 acre prime state-owned site in the heart of our capital city with enormous potential to deliver social and affordable homes.

De-tenanting of the former local authority estate commenced in 2008 and despite the ever-worsening housing crises and Government declaring it their “flagship housing development” the site remains largely undeveloped and derelict.

Mary and City Councilors in the Dublin Agreement group reject the Fine Gael and Sinn Féin proposal for a private (Bartra) funded development of for the following reasons:

• The proposal requires disposal of state owned lands to a private developer
• The proposed affordable purchase units are simply unaffordable
• There is no provision for affordable rental units
• Funding for community facilities is not ring-fenced

The failure to develop O’Devaney will be devastating for the local community and a massive indictment of the states failure to begin to address the housing crises. 

Mary cannot overstate the need for housing in Dublin Central or Fianna Fáil City Councillors desire to see these state-owned lands used to deliver mixed tenure affordable homes for working people in Dublin City. 

The primary barrier to building affordable mixed tenure homes and community facilities at O’Devaney remains the fact that the Government will only fund 30% of the potential 824 residential units on the site.    

Mary has calculated an alternative proposal of a fully funded state development of 824 mixed tenure residential units and community facilities on the site. 

The analysis shows that following an initial €268m capital state investment, the estimated net costs over 20 years would be a less than €50m and unit costs would be less than €60k. 

And these costs pale in comparison to the societal value which the State will recoup from this investment. To understand the value of this site some more, scroll through the images below.

In the context of zero affordable homes being built in Dublin Central since 2011, €160m spend per year on temporary homeless accommodation in Dublin City, escalating and un-affordable rents for working people, it is totally unacceptable that O’Devaney should not be funded for urgent development of social and affordable public housing.