Letter to the editor: City Council housing and RTE lands
The Editor,
Letters PageThe Irish Independent.
Dear Editor,
Tom Moloney (letters 10th June) questions the purchase of 61 apartments at the former RTE lands in Donnybrook for E30.2million by Dublin City Council. He also refers to an apparent lack of shops, schools and places of worship near the site
Without commenting on the quality of the planning application itself which, as a Strategic Housing Development is before the South East Area Committee next Monday, let me put this in context.
The State, through RTE, recently received E110 million for the site. Residents of the Dublin City Council area have remitted more than E100million over the last two years to other parts of the country through the Local Property Tax. The site is across the road from one school less than a half a mile from at least three other Secondary Schools and a superb Primary School and is right beside one Catholic Church, up the road from another and within a mile of, at least, two Church of Ireland Churches.
While the high cost of housing in Dublin is hugely regrettable and something the next Government must deal with the suggestion that this site is not suitable for housing is simple nonsense. The State has been amply rewarded for the site already.
The real pity is that the State did not use the site, which it then owned, to develop Social and Affordable Housing when it could. Of course the E110 million will help RTE Presenters and regular panellists bemoan the absence of a proper housing policy.
Yours sincerely,
Councillor Dermot Lacey
