Six-storey apartment block proposed on site of former Donnybrook Magdalene laundry

The property developer applying for planning permission to build apartment blocks up to six storeys on the site of the Magdalene laundry in Donnybrook, Dublin 4, have clarified that they intend to erect an “information sign” to serve as a memorial to the site’s former use.If permission is granted, a “post-and-panel-style information sign” is to stand at the base of the laundry’s 90m chimney, deemed a protected structure by Dublin City Council in 2012 and described by Pembroke Partnership Ltd as the “most suitable” location for a memorial.Construction plans submitted recently to the council appear to place the memorial partially behind a bin in the centre of the site, although the developers wrote in their planning application that it would be “directly visible” from the site’s entrance on Donnybrook Crescent. They indicated their openness to “a condition to agree a final location, form and wording for the memorial” with the council and its naming and memorial committee. READ MOREPlanning consultants Tom Phillips + Associates, who are working with Pembroke Partnership on the development, confirmed to The Irish Times that the memorial would be “publicly accessible” to people who do not live in the complex but wish to view the memorial. Additional information on the proposed construction has been requested by the council three times since the initial application was lodged in November last year. The application filed in July made no reference to the site’s historic use as the Donnybrook Magdalene laundry.Up to 315 women and girls are believed to have died in the laundry, according to the Justice for Magdalenes Research group, and all but two have their names inscribed on headstones erected on a neighbouring site owned by the Religious Sisters of Charity order of nuns.Operating from 1883 to 1992 under various guises – first a “care centre”, then an “asylum” and later a “laundry” – the institution’s capacity varied between 100 and 120 women and girls “over much of the period of its operation”, the McAleese report published in 2013 found. The planning application filed this week details the “refurbishment of the existing laundry building” to allow for two two-bed duplex apartments and two three-bed houses as well as the construction of three “new blocks ranging in height from three to six storeys”. In these blocks will be 34 residential units in total: one studio apartment, 17 one-bed apartments, seven two-bed apartments, six three-bed units and three three-bed houses. Buildings adjoining the laundry will be demolished to construct these units if planning permission is granted. The proposed development also consists of car and bicycle parking spaces, charging stations for electric vehicles and waste storage facilities, among other amenities. Attempts to build on the site date to 2017, when Pembroke Partnership submitted and later withdrew an application to build a 25-unit residential development. In 2020, Dublin City Council granted permission for 44 apartments to be built in three- and four-storey blocks on the site. The project never got off the ground, however.