Religious allowed to sell lands

Dublin city councillors last night reversed a decision that prevented religious orders selling their lands to property developers. Olivia Kelly reports.

The council had voted last September to ban private housing on religious-owned lands in the draft development plan for the city.

However, since then the council has come under increasing pressure from religious orders and the Conference of Religious in Ireland (CORI) to reverse the decision.

Churches and educational institutions have claimed that they would lose up to €2 billion a year and would be forced to shut down schools and hospitals if they were not allowed to consider private development of their land.

The draft development plan had originally permitted private housing to be considered on lands which had been zoned Z15 or for "long-term institutional" use.