Travellers' exclusion from Kylemore Masterplan slammed as 'deeply disturbing'
Dublin City Councillor Hazel De Nortúin has called out the “disturbing” hypocrisy of Travellers at Labre Park being left out of the Kylemore Masterplan.
Councillors gathered at a Special Council Meeting last night to agree on the Proposed Variation No. 10 of the Kylemore Masterplan, which aims to deliver more than 22,000 additional units into Dublin ’s housing stock. But, People Before Profit Cllr De Nortúin questioned, with such major developments in the works, why Travellers at the adjacent Labre Park site are being left out.
Cllr De Nortúin said it is “deeply disturbing” to hear city planners speak about “inclusivity and everyone having access to services”, while residents of Labre Park have been pushing for redevelopment for decades. As the oldest Traveller-specific accommodation site in the country, promised regeneration of Labre Park has been continually delayed for three decades, with residents remaining in substandard conditions.
The plans to rezone land between Inchicore and Ballyfermot can open the doors to over 5,000 new homes, 8,000 jobs, a railway station, and three schools in the area and act as a response to address Dublin’s growing population. While Cllr De Nortúin said the plan is “being sold a major regeneration opportunity” she stressed that the “communities already living there cannot be treated as an afterthought”.
“Labre Park is Dublin’s oldest Traveller accommodation site. Its regeneration has been talked about since 1996 and not a sod has been turned. Residents are living in overcrowded, substandard conditions with no resolution in sight,” she said.
“Any plan for Kylemore has to respect the families living there, with real protections on height, overlooking, privacy, flooding, access and future Traveller-specific accommodation. We cannot keep drawing up plans that talk about sustainable communities while leaving marginalised groups behind.
“People are sick of being told every rezoning is about solving the housing crisis when what actually follows is expensive apartments, weak community gain and fat profits for developers.”
The response from DCC said that the regeneration of Labre Park falls outside the remit of the Kylemore Plan and therefore was not included in the proposal. “Despite sustained efforts since 2019, including multiple design iterations and funding applications, regeneration proposals for Labre Park have not advanced as planned,” a council report said.
“This has been primarily due to flooding issues, the scale of environmental mitigation required, the associated costs, as well as concerns raised by statutory consultees regarding downstream flood impacts and broader environmental risks. The most recent planning Part 8 application 6 proposed the refurbishment of 18 existing homes, the delivery of 12 new homes and a range of broader estate upgrade works.
“It is acknowledged that the failure to date to secure approval for a regeneration plan for Labre Park is deeply frustrating for the local community, the residents and all stakeholders involved. In response, a revised approach has been adopted with the regeneration programme now being progressed in two distinct phases.”
Cllr De Nortúin, along with fellow PBP Cllr Conor Reddy, opposed Proposed Variation No. 10 and did not support Proposed Variation No. 11 to the Dublin City Development Plan last night. They warned the “proposals risk handing major windfalls to landowners while offering no guarantee of affordability, community infrastructure or homes”.
“Dublin needs homes, but rezoning land in the way this has been done does not guarantee a single extra home, never mind affordable housing or the schools, childcare, transport and community services that have to come with development if it is to be sustainable,” Cllr Reddy said.
“This is a cynical exercise pushed by the Minister, shifting blame for the slow pace of housing delivery onto councils and inflating his own targets.
“In reality, Dublin City already has land zoned for almost 50,000 homes and planning permission for over 13,000 homes that have not even commenced. This is the real issue. Delivery has to be the priority before more rezoning. Thousands of homes with planning permission are not being built.
“This is not a zoning problem. It is an example of the failure you get when you rely on the private market for the delivery of homes. We risk repeating that failure if we are again relying on private developers to bring forward these sites now that they have been rezoned.
“With the stroke of a pen this council vastly enriched a number of private landowners last night. Employment and industrial land became residential and mixed-use development land overnight, its value increased dramatically and we get nothing in return.
“The Residential Zoned Land Tax does not come close to fixing this. It is charged at 3% of market value on zoned lands, and on newly rezoned land it does not even bite for three years. In the meantime the land can be flipped or traded with the uplift already baked in.
“We have seen this cycle of speculative activity before on the Chivers site and in other examples across the city. We used to have an 80% windfall tax on rezoning profits. Fine Gael and Labour scrapped it in Budget 2015 and handed those gains straight back to speculators.”
Cllr Reddy said the concerns were particularly sharp in the north-west of the city: “If Dublin City is going to add more density, then the services and infrastructure have to come first : schools, childcare, GPs, youth services, community space, public transport and open space.
“In Santry, like most locals, I want to see housing on the Shanowen Road lands, public housing especially. But a blunt Z1 residential rezoning is the wrong tool for a strategic public landbank.
“ The Santry Forum put forward a serious vision for the site including community and employment uses, an innovation centre potentially linked to DCU, alongside public housing. Crucially residents demanded a statutory plan for Santry, to connect any new development to the existing community and to avoid reproducing the messy patchwork that has been developed over recent years. Sadly the residents have been overlooked and the rezoning proceeded before a plan, this is back-to-front in my view.
“In Jamestown, the Council wants to lean on higher density figures from the Masterplan, but that Masterplan was sold on more than unit numbers. It promised employment space, community and cultural space, a school, open space and transport links. Without that hard and soft infrastructure, there is no sustainable community on those lands.”
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