Simon Coveney urged to honour Irish Glass Bottle affordable-housing commitment

Rental apartments, instead of homes for sale, can be used to fulfil a 2017 commitment to provide “affordable housing” on the former Irish Glass Bottle site in Ringsend, according to legal advice obtained by Dublin City Council.A consortium fronted by developer Johnny Ronan is building up to 3,800 apartments on the site, once a totem of the property crash. Affordable housing is required as part of the site’s zoning. However, the council has been unable to reach agreement with the developer for the provision of any affordable-purchase housing and is negotiating to secure some homes for a cost-rental scheme. Councillors and residents are urging former tánaiste and housing minister Simon Coveney to appeal to Ronan to provide affordable homes for sale, after it emerged he now lobbies for the developer.READ MOREA 2017 affordable-housing deal between the Department of Housing – led at the time by Coveney – the council and the National Asset Management Agency (Nama) was instrumental in securing the consent of city councillors to designate the site a “fast-track” strategic development zone (SDZ). The deal was contingent on 25 per cent – more than 900 apartments – being used for social and affordable housing. Planning laws at the time required 10 per cent of the homes be used for social housing. Councillors, and locals, understood the remaining 15 per cent would be used for an affordable-purchase scheme, where homes would be offered for sale at a State-subsidised discount.Cost-rental schemes, where the State subsidises below market rents, had yet to be established.Although 176 social apartments have recently been completed, the council has not secured agreement with Ronan, who has controlled the site for almost six years, on the provision of any affordable-purchase homes. It is understood the potential costs have stymied talks. Two years ago, in advance of construction, it was indicated apartments could cost €495,000 for a one-bed unit and €675,000 for a two-bed.The council executive has secured legal advice that cost-rental housing could be used to fulfil the “affordable” element, as an alternative to the delivery of housing for sale.Labour councillor Dermot Lacey said this was not what the councillors and community understood they were signing up to.“The affordable element was always understood to be affordable purchase, the concept of cost-rental didn’t exist at the time. We always saw the affordable housing as being housing local people could afford to buy. Genuinely, I had no doubt about that,” Lacey said.The legal advice, seen by The Irish Times, states: “The composition of the 15% social/affordable could be met by providing cost rental units as defined in the Affordable Housing Act 2021”.The council was “not precluded from considering cost rental as an option for delivery of affordable housing under the SDZ by virtue of the fact that the cost rental statutory provisions were not in place at the time”.This interpretation does not reflect what councillors agreed to, Lacey said. “Morally, politically and policy-wise, we entered into an agreement, and I would like to think Mr Coveney would say to Johnny Ronan and company, ‘this is what I agreed to, and I think we should honour it’.”Green Party councillor Hazel Chu agrees. “I get what the council is trying for on this one, but this is retrospectively rewriting what we had previously agreed. I would urge Mr Coveney to remember the commitments he made.” Independent councillor Mannix Flynn said a price should have been fixed for the affordable apartments, with an agreed adjustment for inflation, when the Ronan consortium was selected as the preferred bidder for the site in 2020.“All we did was negotiate a certain percentage of housing, we didn’t see the deal between the department, the council and Johnny Ronan. Can the state afford to buy those affordable units at the cost that Johnny Ronan wants to sell them?” Patsy Doolin, chairwoman of the Irish Glass Bottle Housing Action Group, said cost-rental is not what the community was promised. “People want to be able to buy them and own them,” Doolin said. She was excited to hear the former minister was working with the developers. “I’d love to just talk to him, have a cup of coffee with him and ask him to help us,” she said.Lobbying returns show Coveney and Ronan met Tánaiste and Minister for Finance Simon Harris in August for talks “concerning the development of Bremore Port and related ports/infrastructure policy”.Coveney did not respond to queries in relation to the Ringsend site over the last week. The Glass Bottle consortium, which includes the Ronan Group, Lioncor and Oaktree Capital, declined to comment. The council is negotiating with the developers to use a block of 273 apartments for cost-rental housing. “Affordable purchase may be examined in future phases,” it said.The Irish Glass Bottle Company closed in 2002. The site was bought in 2006 for €412 million by a consortium involving developer Bernard McNamara and the Dublin docklands Development Authority. Nama bought the debt associated with the site from the now defunct Anglo Irish Bank after the property crash.The council in 2019 entered into negotiations with Nama for affordable homes and said it would be willing to buy plots of land from the State agency. However, Nama instead offered the site to the market, with the Ronan-led consortium confirmed as the preferred bidder in December 2020.