The Government yesterday announced arrangements to allow nearly 16,000 homes to be built in north Dublin with the use of temporary sewerage facilities.
This followed publication of the second report on the housing market by Dr Peter Bacon, which said the provision of 15,700 new homes on the north fringe of Dublin city was being held up by delays in advancing plans for a sewerage scheme to serve the area.
It notes that the Northern Fringe Interceptor Sewer would open up nearly 900 acres of land for residential development, stretching from Ballymun eastwards to Baldoyle Estuary. This scheme is also necessary to cater for the expansion of Dublin Airport.
According to the report, Dublin Corporation received approval in October 1997 to prepare contract documents for the project, which it now estimates will cost £17 million. The scheme will be completed in 2004.
Because of this, the report recommends the provision of temporary sewage treatment or pumping facilities, subject to appropriate environmental safeguards, to achieve a short-term increase in housing potential in Dublin of up to 15,700 units.
Such "infrastructure bottlenecks" are blamed by Dr Bacon for constricting the availability of serviced land. On the basis of submissions made by the local authorities in 1998, four schemes with an estimated housing yield of 1,400 were due to start in the Dublin region. Of these, only one did, producing a yield of 300 houses. The others are to start this year.
Because of the experience of delays in starting schemes, the report says it is "essential that local authorities take steps to ensure that deadlines . . . are met", the report says.
Housing schemes to begin in the Dublin region in 1999 will provide about 24,000 units, according to the report. Of these, about 8,200 will be completed during the year, a little over half of them in Dublin and the rest in the mid-east.
Taking into account "pipeline contracts" the Dublin city and county managers have produced a revised estimate suggesting that there is potential for 95,710 housing units within Co Dublin, of which 39,863 could be regarded as "currently available".
The overall assessment is almost 16,400 units higher than an earlier estimate by the four managers in January 1998. As the Bacon report notes, this reflects a move towards higher residential densities as well as an increase in the amount of land rezoned.
The report recommends that the Minister for the Environment issue a general policy directive to local authorities requiring them to increase residential densities. It also says the Planning Acts need to be strengthened to permit the local authorities to require a varied mix of house types, in terms of their size, on new housing estates, including standard semi-detached houses and smaller "starter homes".
Though the number of planning permissions granted for housing schemes in the third quarter of 1998 was the highest on record, Dr Bacon said a rapid increase in appeals to An Bord Pleanala and the delays in processing them were a cause for concern.
Referring to anxiety in the construction industry that the greater Dublin area is in danger of running out of development land, Dr Bacon says this "should be relieved as additional lands become available continuously over the forthcoming five years".
The report proposes that the Department promote an initiative, involving local authorities, to identify with developers and others the road and public transport constraints preventing the development of existing zoned residential lands.
It says urgent consideration needs to be given to the possibility of developing existing towns outside the Dublin conurbation such as Navan, Athy and Arklow and to proposals for an early improvement in public transport to these locations.
The report also calls for a national spatial development strategy.
