Dublin City Council housing chair suggests ‘encouraging people away from the city’
The chair of the Dublin City Council (DCC) housing committee has suggested the local authority adopt a policy to “encourage people away from the city”.
Fianna Fáil councillor Deirdre Heney made the comment last week during a housing committee meeting. She asked DCC’s housing chief, Mick Mulhern, to consider including the proposal in the council’s housing strategy.
“Is there any opportunity… to kind of encourage people away from the city,” she said. “And I don’t mean that [as] a negative. I mean that [as] a positive.
“I know people who moved away from the city and they have really good quality of life, experiences, peace, tranquillity and all of the rest of it, as well as, I suppose, a lack of huge demands on limited services,” she said.
In response to Ms Heney, Right to Change councillor Pat Dunne said he saw it from a different perspective.
“I see Dubliners, neighbours, family, people I know well, being forced out of the city because of high rents and unaffordability. So, we are forcing our people out of the city at the moment, chair,” he said.
Ms Heney responded: “I think you’re misinterpreting my point, but I’ll let you away with it.”
Speaking to the Irish Independent, Ms Heney said the idea would be to introduce a programme along the lines of the shuttered Rural Resettlement Ireland (RRI) scheme.
RRI assisted people in moving away from cities into rural areas in search of a better quality of life. Its government funding was cut in 2012.
“I suppose I just constantly think that there’s so much pressure on services in the city, and there’s so much stress being experienced by people living in the city trying to get from A to B,” Ms Heney said.
“Living in towns and villages outside of the capital city has huge benefits in terms of the environment you’re living in.
“I want the best for people. While I love Dublin myself, I certainly love the countryside. I wish I had more of an opportunity to visit the countryside.
“There’s so much more out there than just being in Dublin, so much more else happening.”
Dublin is the third most traffic-congested city in Europe. Photo: Getty
Jason Cullen, chair of transport advocacy group Dublin Commuter Coalition, said that advising people to move out of the city would place even more pressure on packed buses, trains and road networks.
“I don’t think, with the sheer level of housing crisis we’re in right now, that we need to encourage people to move out of Dublin,” he said.
“The price of buying a home here is so outrageously expensive that people are looking further afield just naturally.
The economic factors forcing people out are leading to swathes of people spending “hours and hours” commuting into and out of the capital, he said.
A recent traffic index study by TomTom found that Dublin drivers lost an average of 191 hours to traffic congestion last year, almost eight hours more than 2024, making it the third most congested city in Europe.
“That’s not quality of life for people,” Mr Cullen said. “And to suggest that moving out of the city centre would somehow give people access to a greater level of infrastructure or facilities is for the most part incorrect.
“The greatest and largest collection of entertainment, facilities, work opportunities, hospitals – it’s all in Dublin.”
We really need to build so many more houses in Dublin, so people can live where they want
To tackle Dublin’s escalating housing crisis, Mr Cullen said the council should be focused on building high-density housing at scale on council-owned land.
“When I hear Dublin City Council Housing SPC talking about moving people out of Dublin, I really wonder if they’re focused on resolving the issues, because until they resolve housing, it’s just going to continue to cause havoc on health, transport and everything else,” he added.
Green Party councillor Ray Cunningham, who sits on DCC’s housing committee, said he felt Ms Heney was making a good point about balanced regional development, although her phrasing was “a little odd”.
“There’s too much industry and too many jobs that are concentrated in Dublin and in the Dublin area. And we really need to be looking at how we support development around the country,” he said.
“But at the same time… there are thousands of people who are being priced out of Dublin at the moment. This is where they want to live and this is where their family is. But they just can’t afford to live here. So, we really need to build so many more houses in Dublin, so people can live where they want.”
Mr Cunningham said balanced regional development was a laudable goal, but “it’s our job to make the city work for everybody who wants to live here”.
“That means building more housing. On DCC, and particularly in the housing committee, we really need to be looking at how do we build more,” he said.