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Ireland's political and cultural magazine
March/April 2022 19
scheme is purely for rental and does not meet
the need for local residents and their community
for housing which is integrated and provides for
people of mixed incomes as well as appropriate
social housing. The scheme includes provision
for the required 10 per cent social and 10 per
cent aordable housing.
Rory Hearne of Maynooth University said the
“mega build-to-rent scheme would essentially
be a private enclave set apart from the local
area, owned by overseas institutional investors”.
“This is a reversion of 100 years in the social
progress of land ownership and is part of a race
to the bottom in the Irish housing system”.
It also appears to conflict with an assurance
by former Archbishop Diarmuid Martin in
advance of the, Vatican-approved, Clonlie sale
that the priority for the diocese was “to ensure
the buildings and lands would be used for the
benefit of the local community and a legacy for
the city of Dublin”.
The land deal certainly benefited the Church
and the GAA which hailed it as the best in its
history and “the key achievement for the year, if
not the decade” in 2019. “The Archbishop was
very anxious that he would sell to the GAA and
he really wanted to deliver a social and
aordable housing complement to that part of
the city,” explained GAA stadium and
commercial director, Peter McKenna.
a hotel, two new pitches, a clubhouse and oce
facilities on the 11 acres it has retained from the
land deals.
Instead of helping to resolve the housing
crisis, as the church says it wants to do, many of
the 120 parties who objected to the Hines
application have argued that it will exacerbate
the emergency.
The €610 million Hines plan proposes 12
apartment blocks ranging from two storeys to
18 storeys in height on the former site of the
former Holy Cross seminary and college.
Among those with reservations was Dublin
City Council which said that it was disappointed
with “the disappointingly high quantum of
single aspect and studio and one-bed units”
which, it argued, “is not considered appropriate
to the area and could constitute an unbalanced
form of development”. DCC said the proposed
71 per cent of studio and one-bed units within
the scheme “is alarming” adding that “it is
considered unlikely the development will
provide an attractive mixed-use sustainable
neighbourhood….in compliance with the Dublin
City Development Plan 2016-2022”. The local
authority did not, however, recommend against
the planning application.
What must also concern the Catholic
Archdiocese is the criticism of the Clonlie and
Croke Park Residents Association that the
T
he move by the Catholic Archdiocese
of Dublin to alter the zoning of lands
where 33 churches are located across
the city has once again raised the
question of its potential role in the
provision of aordable and social homes in the
midst of a deep housing crisis.
In mid-February, it lodged a 130-page
submission in response to the Dublin City
Council development plan opposing zoning
rules which preclude housing or office
developments in all but “highly exceptional”
circumstances on such lands.
In the document, solicitors Mason Hayes and
Curran claimed that “the proposed changes are
unlawful insofar as they affect religious
institutions such as our client”.
Some of the churches “are located in
disadvantaged areas where the delivery of
housing is taking priority over additional
institutional land uses”, according to the
planning consultants Brock McClure, which
contributed to the church submission.
The development comes after a request last
year by housing minister, Darragh O’Brien, to the
Catholic archbishop, Eamon Martin, to identify
vacant buildings or lands which are owned by
the Church and could be used to alleviate the
housing crisis. In response, the retired bishop
of Killaloe, Willie Walsh, agreed in August 2021
that the church should be doing everything it
could to help address the housing crisis.
“I would have always had the attitude that
church land is not private property. church land
is land belonging to the people. The people
involved in the church. It is not belonging to the
bishop or parish priests or that sort of thing. It
is the people’s land and I think that anything the
church can do to help the housing situation I
think it should be there and trying to do it”,
Walsh said.
All well and good. Since then, however, the
Dublin Archdiocese has come under intense
criticism over the circumstances surrounding its
sale, in 2019, of a 31.8-acre site at Clonlie Road
to the GAA from which it netted a reported €95
million. According to its financial report for
2020, the Catholic Archdiocese received a
further sum of almost €3 million due to a to a
clause in its contract with the GAA that it would
receive “a share in the profits made by the GAA
if they sold on any of the lands or buildings to a
third party”.
The allocation followed the sale of 19 acres of
the lands by the GAA to US investment fund
Hines which has been granted planning
permission by An Bord Pleanála to build almost
1600 ‘build to rent’ apartments on the site. It is
understood that the GAA received €105 million
for the lands it sold to Hines and plans to provide
NEWS
Rezoning for Mammon
The Catholic Church had high ideals in getting its
land rezoned but there is little sense its Clonliffe
lands will be used for the common good
By Frank Connolly
