A company with links to the developer Bernard McNamara has submitted an application to build 250 homes at Bryanstown in Drogheda.
Coreet, a special-purpose vehicle with various links to McNamara, has agreed to buy the 6.46ha (15.8ac) site from a landowner and is seeking permission for the homes under the fast-track planning process.
The proposed development, on Beamore Road, just 500m south of the Meath/Louth county border, consists of 94 houses and 156 apartments, each with two or three bedrooms, along with communal gardens, a childcare facility and 363 parking spaces.
Consultants for Coreet say the homes will help tackle Drogheda’s “severe shortage of housing”; they add that most of them are two-bedroom apartments, as “first-time buyers who qualify for the Help to Buy scheme will underpin the demand”.
The scheme will expire in December unless the Government extends it in Budget 2020, raising a question mark over the viability of the Bryanstown development and others like it. For the time being, the McNamara scheme is expected to be delivered in four phases.
The Co Meath plan is one of a number of housing developments that McNamara and companies linked to him are seeking permission for and developing. In Santry, in north Dublin, one associated company is due to receive a decision from An Bord Pleanála next month in response to a fast-track application to develop 112 build-to-rent apartments on a site currently occupied by the Swiss Cottage pub.
