Business man Neil Delehanty posted a very interesting tweet yesterday pertaining to the former Crown paints site which has been the source of so much controversy in recent weeks as the government seeks to force the local community to accept a huge asylum centre.
“Did you know that the old paint factory in Coolock had previously been part of an ambitious development plan?” he asked. “In 2019, the factory site was REFUSED planning for: 198 apartments, 1 Crèche, 172 Hotel beds, 1 Playground, [and a] 120 unit Apart-hotel.”
🚨 Did you know that the old paint factory in Coolock had previously been part of an ambitious development plan?
— Nick Delehanty - Vote No.1 (@Nick_Delehanty) July 22, 2024
In 2019, the factory site was REFUSED planning for:
198 apartments 🏠
1 Crèche
172 Hotel beds 🛏️
1 Playground
120 unit Apart-hotel 🏢
What happened??......🧵 pic.twitter.com/mzXeIzQUtU
He revealed that the 2018 application for planning permission sought to transform the the old paint factory into a mixed-use development for the area. The full application, Delehanty explained, would include, in addition to 4 apartment blocks containing 198 homes; a 172-bed Hotel with function rooms and retail space; an Aparthotel which would have 120 units for longer stays; commercial Spaces including Offices and incubator; and amenities including a children’s playground, 238 car parking spaces, 360 cycle parking spaces, and a crèche.
The planning permission was refused, he reveals, because the area is zoned “Z6” for “employment and enterprise” – a decision he finds inexplicable, given that “we are in the middle of a housing crisis”. It’s hard to disagree with that.
A quote from the Inspector’s report states that the residential element of the proposal was not “sufficiently subsidiary to the main employment generating uses, and would at the scale proposed conflict with with and undermine the primary land use zoning objective, which is ‘to provide for the creation and protection of enterprise and facilitate opportunities for employment creation’.”
As Delehanty points out: “But meanwhile since this decision in 2019. Our Government decided to pass a new incredible law, whereby the same paint factory can now be used to house asylum seekers without any planning permission.”
“This does not make any sense. OUTRAGES and SHAMBOLIC are the only words I can use to describe what has happened here,” he posted.
He is, of course, absolutely right, and the saga around the former Crown Paints site underscores exactly how unfair, inequitable, and downright undemocratic the decision to continue sweeping aside the norms of governance in relation to planning permission was – and why it should be repealed.
How can it be the case that the authorities refusing planning for a development which could have provided housing, hotel rooms, and amenities to Coolock – and then simply wave through, without any requirement for planning permission at all, a scheme to turn the site into a 500-bed centre for migrants?
How can this be seen as anything but unjust – and as an example of preferential treatment for those who are not Irish citizens? The very natural reaction from the local residents, and from the rest of the country, is to ask why planning regulations cannot be waived aside to assist homeless Irish people, including the hundreds of thousands who are unable to move out of the family home, or left couch-surfing rather than sleep on the streets.
The legal mechanism for the preferential treatment first came into place when Minister Darragh O’Brien signed the Regulations in June 2022 to said that “certain classes of temporary development, including residential accommodation, undertaken by or on behalf of a State authority, to provide protection to displaced persons from Ukraine, will be exempt from the provisions of the Planning and Development Act (other than environmental considerations)”.
“The specified development classes will not require planning permission for the period that the regulations are in place and will not be subject to the various restrictions that would normally apply to classes of exempted development,” the regulations said.
It was pretty obvious at that stage what was going to happen – that the usual pattern of bait and switch used by the government in relation to housing new arrivals in centres around the county would also apply in relation to planning permission.
While the suspension of the need for planning approval was supposed to last a year, it was extended, but most significantly, its purpose was also extended beyond provision for Ukrainians who are actually fleeing war. Within six months, the government had decided that no planning permission would be required for IPAS centres either – even though most of those arriving claiming asylum were not, in fact, from war torn countries.
In effect, the war in Ukraine has given a wholly dishonest government the cover it required to suspend the normal laws which protect communities in order to bully through a hugely unpopular immigration policy. This cannot continue. Apart from anything else, it is facilitating the absolute denial by the Cabinet of the chaos in the asylum system and the need to drastically stem the flow.
It is worth noting again, as my colleague John McGuirk did last week, that the former paint manufacturers site is lying fallow precisely because the government did not do what was required to replace the jobs and the industry to the area for the past 27 years – while denying planning permission for hotels and apartments.
At its height, the factory employed around 150 people. The first round of layoffs came in 1997. The factory and its associated warehouse struggled on until 2016, when the last of the jobs went, outsourced to cheaper production facilities overseas. At the time, SIPTU were distraught, saying “The loss of these jobs will have a devastating impact on our members, their families and the local community…. All but three of the workers are from the area around the warehouse which has been open since 1968.”
The jobs are gone, but the building still stands.
The people of Coolock, having been denied hotels and new apartments and amenities, are then expected to simply accept that the same space can be used to house at least 500 strangers without any consultation. If they complain, the media are on hand to call them racist scumbags.
(Likewise, the sneering from the Dublin media when the people of Roscrea said they wanted a hotel to meet for very ordinary events such as family gatherings or First Communions was disgusting. The same people think their human rights are abused if someone uses the wrong pronouns or they can’t access organic tomatoes.)
That cannot continue either. The suspension of planning permission must end. Fairness demands it. Social cohesion demands it. A grown-up approach to the crisis in migration demands it.