A 2 MIN READ…VIEWS OWN
The Government has this year put intense pressure on all Councils and Councillors to find an additional 50% zoned land for housing for their development plans (see the background information via the link below). They have stated that if Councillors do not rezone sufficient land, they will take the power from them and do it themselves.
But what does this mean for Lucan, which is regularly at a state of near gridlock, and has insufficient road networks and public transport options? Lucan also has two Strategic Development Zones (SDZ’s) nearby in Adamstown & Clonburris, which means many thousands more people moving into the area in the coming months and years. I welcome these communities, as they were planned previously with services and resources, and the construction is in progress. We need more connection between these new communities and those of us living here for years. Many of us were “new” to Lucan in the 1970’s and on, and our communities should grow together.
But I digress slightly. The background to this post is that I was in town on Saturday night with my husband to attend “Dublin Gothic” which is currently running in the Abbey Theatre. We’d had to drive as we were collecting our son off-route, on the way home. As we drove from Lower Abbey Street around Jervis St., through Smithfield, and on down the South Quays, we counted at least 5 massive brownfield sites, some of which have been vacant as long as we can remember. These huge, vacant sites are perfect for dense housing, and would revitalise parts of the city that are crying out for more residents.
Not only were the 5 huge undeveloped sites in the city centre obvious to us, there were also many significant historic properties and businesses that we drove by, boarded up, many suitable to be redeveloped into apartments. There were many older shops that seemed to have nobody living over the ground floor – again, an opportunity to increase city capacity.
So my stance on the situation is this; Lucan has rezoned sufficient land at this stage. I feel that any more large-scale residential rezoning should not happen! Small “infill” rezoning I have no objection to; small developments that put unused pockets of suitable land into use, or build “age-friendly” housing in the right place, so people don’t have to leave their neighbourhoods, but in terms of large housing estates, Lucan has done its bit already, and then some.
We need more access onto the N4 (at Esker Lane and Tandy’s Lane), rather than routing all traffic into the village and out. This has been refused by Transport Infrastructure Ireland. I will continue to lobby for this.
We need a stop to M50 toll-dodgers clogging up our village and surrounds. Measures to address this have not been taken by Transport Infrastructure Ireland. I will continue to lobby for this.
We also need more parents to encourage their children to walk or cycle to school safely in groups, where possible, rather than dropping them off in cars and adding to the congestion.
We need people to report issues with bus/train availability and capacity to myself and Paul Gogarty TD, so we can continue to raise it on your behalf, and try to get better public transport for our growing communities. We will continue to lobby for this.
But in terms of rezoning all the former “buffer zones” between our areas (and they were planned as buffer zones back in the 1990’s as I met the former planner at a local government event), at the moment, I feel this is just too much, and Lucan will suffer. We don’t want to return to the situation that we were in in the 1970’s where newer parts of Lucan lacked basic services and businesses.
What do you think?
[Working with Paul Gogarty TD ]
Government press release from July 2025 Dept Housing, Local Govt & Heritage: https://www.gov.ie/…/ministers-browne-and-cummins…/
Cllr Helen Farrell 