I have made observations on an application for 1,350 housing units at Belcamp. The area was to have a Local Area Plan but that requirement was irresponsibly removed from the Fingal Development Plan in 2023. I previously made a submission on an application on this site which was later withdrawn.

Although close to the existing urban area, this site, unlike most of the zoned land in Fingal, lacks easy access to public transport. Supplying public transport to the site is a central challenge which hasn’t been adequately addressed. An east-west route through the site should be protected for light rail, as I have argued since 2007.

I received a response on Friday 23rd to my queries of 9th January. It shows that important sites with permission for housing or zoned for housing have been omitted from the Settlement Capacity Audit. This includes 3 sites (Blanchardstown and Santry) with existing planning permissions amounting to 1511 units, and one Local Area Plan area (Kellystown) where the Council intends to seek Part 8 approval for the access road this year, with capacity for between 1000 and 1500 units.

I have made a submission to the public consultation with the following recommendations:

• The bringing forward of the Dunsink development is welcome and appropriate. This land is well sited and it really didn’t make sense to defer its development.
• The proposals to rezone green belt and agricultural land should be dropped. A number of the proposed sites were considered and rejected for rezoning in the development of the 2023 Development Plan. The Green Belt zoning has always been intended as a permanent zoning and the proposas to eat into green belt land undermine the proper planning and sustainable development vision for the County. In addition there are grave concerns about flooding and public transport access which haven’t been investigated as they should have been.
• In the light of the over-calculation mentioned above, it is not necessary to find other lands for zoning to replace these rezoning proposals.

I have put more details on the calculations below.

A Variation to the County Development Plan has been proposed by the Council Executive and is out for public consultation until 29th January.

It is in response to a direction from Central Government to increase the housing targets for the County. It is proposing to bring forward the zoning of land at Dunsink which I strongly support. However, it also includes a number of scatterred rezoning proposals eating into the green belts around towns in Fingal, which have been established planning policies for decades.

The total additional zoning proposed would be for 5000 housing units, based on a Settlement Capacity Analysis which appears to have omitted some important sites zoned for housing including sites which have existing planning permissions. This is because the Settlement Capacity Analysis is based on the Residential Zoned Land Tax and land with existing permitted uses is excluded from the tax even if it has residential planning permissions.

I have written to the Council officials about the calculations, asking for some more details.