Council lays out timeline for building flagship housing scheme at Emmet Road in Inchicore

Construction works to ready lands at Emmet Road in Inchicore for 578 social and cost-rental apartments are set to begin in March, according to a presentation to councillors this week.

Builders should then start on those homes and community facilities in November, said Sandra McAleer, the council’s project manager.

That all relies, though, on councillors agreeing that the council can borrow €132.5 million to help fund the cost-rental homes, said McAleer, on 27 January, at a meeting of the council’s housing and social inclusion committee.

Councillors asked a few questions about the risk of taking on that much debt.

Mick Mulhern, the assistant chief executive in charge of housing for the council, said that one way the council plans to temper that is to outsource the estate management, rather than do it in-house.

“It’s not a building that could just find its way into our housing maintenance plan and be managed in that way,” said Mulhern.

“It just, the level of risk that the council takes, you need a team dedicated, focused on managing this building,” he said. “Because the level of borrowing that we have to make repayments on.”

A long time coming

Sinn Féin Councillor Daithí Doolan said the presentation on the Emmet Road scheme was probably the most important one that councillors on the committee had seen.

He stressed the difference between the model of delivery for this scheme on the site in Inchicore where St Michael’s Estate once stood, and those in place for the schemes being built by private developers at the O’Devaney Gardens site in Stoneybatter and on Oscar Traynor Road in Coolock.

All three schemes have been on the council’s agenda to develop under its flagship Housing Lands Initiative.

Past council terms saw fierce debate over the make-up of housing to go on those lands, with many councillors opposing the idea of any of it being used for private housing sold at market rates.

The O’Devaney Gardens and Oscar Traynor Road schemes have ended up with models split between social, affordable, and market-rate private homes, with the council working with private developers and leveraging the value of the land to help fund the projects.

Housing at Emmet Road is to be wholly public.

“It is absolutely wholly being delivered by Dublin City Council,” said Doolan. “We were told this would never happen.”

McAleer, the project manager, said the council plans to put three contracts in place to get the Emmet Road development built.

The first is to get the site prepped, demolishing the HSE building and the old community centre there, and putting in utilities, she said.

They have a contractor for that. “They will be starting on site in March this year,” said McAleer.

The second is the main construction contract for the homes and most of the community facilities – such as a creche, library, community hub, and new public spaces.

The council has a short-list for contractors for this. They’ll go out to tender for bids from them next month, she said.

The third contract is set to cover a block at the front of the site, where 91 homes will sit above a supermarket.

The total arrangement for that is yet to be worked out, said McAleer. But the idea is that the developer will build and keep the supermarket while the council would own the homes.

The development should be finished by the third quarter of 2028, the presentation shows.

What about?

Approval from councillors to borrow millions is key to meeting those deadlines, McAleer told councillors at the housing committee meeting.

The Department of Housing is funding the 137 social homes and contributing to the creche and community hub, she said. It is also giving €150,000 per home for the cost-rental apartments, she said.

But the council has to find the rest for the cost rentals itself, she said. “We must borrow.” The Housing Finance Agency has quoted them 3.3 percent interest for a 40-year loan, she said.

They need, they think, €132.5 million – but the final figure depends on the quotations that come back from builders in response to the tender.

On 10 February, the council’s CEO, Richard Shakespeare, and its acting head of finance, Victor Leonov, are due to present the latest capital programme to councillors.

They will ask for permission to borrow for Emmet Road then, she said. “It’s key that we get this resolution as quickly as possible in order not to delay the next stage.”

Green Party Councillor Donna Cooney asked whether the council was reliant on income from the retail spaces in the development, for the numbers to stack up.

Because they had issues getting tenants into retail spaces owned by the council in Ballymun, she said. She would have concerns about a similar thing happening here, she said.

McAleer said that wasn’t a consideration in this. Rents for the cost rentals are determined purely by the costs of construction of delivering the units, she said. “You don’t build into that anything to do with the retail.”

Independent Councillor Cieran Perry asked why there was a special arrangement for the estate management.

Dublin City Council housing complexes are generally managed by council staff, even if individual maintenance tasks can be outsourced to contractors.

Said Perry: “Is there any particular reason why we are outsourcing the management of this site in particular?”

Said Mulhern: “This is the first cost-rental scheme that [Dublin City Council] will do.”

For people to want to live in this accommodation, they generally don’t want to see it as council housing, he says.

“They want to see it as well-managed, well-looked after rental accommodation,” said Mulhern. “Tenants, future tenants.”

Council sums are also based on assumptions around how much vacancy there will be, he said. “You have to keep those things really really low all the time. So you have to have a team working on that constantly.”