The Throttling of Development In Ireland

This link provides the best summary I have found illustrating the current invisible strangulation of development in Ireland.

Archiseek Link

Developments larger than 2 houses in Dun Laoghaire Rathdown have been banned, due to lack of water services/treatment infrastructure.
Dublin City faces the same crisis of lack of capacity. Across the country developers have found in town after town that planning applications (made on zoned lands at a cost of many thousands) are refused for no reason other than lack of sanitary services. In many cases there will be a least a 2 to 3 year hiatus before there is any improvement.

In the worst cases, local authorities are proceeding under the illusion that upgrades to the system will be funded by large scale developer contributions. As construction is virtually at a standstill and will only be limping along for the next while, the likelihood of enough development proceeding to provide funds for the major works needed is in their dreams only.

What has happened plainly is that there has been little or no infrastructural planning in the engineering departments of local authorities and they have happily sat by knowing that ongoing development is using up capacity without doing anything to replace it. This inertia may partly be accounted for by the fact that the post of County Engineer was abolished in local government reform some years back, and now there is virtually no co-ordination between planning and engineering departments. It may also relate to the "unsackability" factor in local authorities.

Effluent treatment has been chronically underfunded for years - not as sexy to have your photo taken next to the sewage plant as next to that "go-fast" motorway.

The result is that we do not have the ability to permit development even if and when the economy allows it. It may also create pressures for granting a plethora of private treatment plants that will be costly and inefficient to maintain, and for letting development connect to plants that are over capacity and contaminating rivers. As many National Spatial Strategy towns and villages are at a standstill in terms of water services, we are likely to see the proportion of unplanned dispersed development increase.

The current economy-led halt to building in Ireland will not last for ever. The underlying infrastructural restrictions will not be able to be dealt with overnight when people are ready to build again. This is a case of neglect and of dysfunctional organisation, that needs to be rectified sooner not later.

Information from anyone who is aware of "over capacity" treatment systems and water shortages would be welcome on this thread.

Bumped as moved into new forum

nothing to do with developers not sticking to places that do have services.

ah yes i read about the sandyford thing, well is it blockage by engineers or as much is previous overdevelopment.

developement isn't been throttled,but it should have been

lostexpectation wrote:

nothing to do with developers not sticking to places that do have services.

ah yes i read about the sandyford thing, well is it blockage by engineers or as much is previous overdevelopment.

A combination of both.
It is not just Sandyford, it is the entire County of DLR. A very crude strategy for Dublin has dumped a large quota for new additional residential units on DLRathdown with little or no regard to its peripheral location and road infrastructure. The County had very little suitable greenfield land suited to development. The Council responded with proposals for building on a golf course and slapping a pile of apartment development into the Sandyford Industrial Estate and up the mountains. An Bord Pleanala told them to make an Action Plan for Sandyford after the horse had bolted and the area was half built. Sandyford was one of the few places zoned for manufacture - now it is gone to flats, private hospitals and call centres - the only work left for working class people is shopwork and cleaning.

Yesterday Dublin City Council had a conference about good design, and said 280,000 new housing units would be needed by 2014. Where is the water and the sewerage capacity supposed to come from by then? Will there be people everywhere sleeping in boxes?
Dublin City own an unknown number of flats that they acquired as "Social and Affordable" units from developers - left empty and deteriorating. Why????

cactus flower wrote:

Where is the water and the sewerage capacity supposed to come from by then?

The Shannon.

The fairy bush just outside Carrick.

cactus flower wrote:

Developments larger than 2 houses in Dun Laoghaire Rathdown have been banned, due to lack of water services/treatment infrastructure.
Dublin City faces the same crisis of lack of capacity. Across the country developers have found in town after town that planning applications (made on zoned lands at a cost of many thousands) are refused for no reason other than lack of sanitary services. In many cases there will be a least a 2 to 3 year hiatus before there is any improvement.

Well about bloody time. I am sick of developement for developement's sake.

In town after town for the last decade, developements have been allowed that have served no other purpose that to create a channel for landowners and developers to make a fast one, regardless of the impact of the development on the locality, the locality's infrastructure or the people of that locality.

To accuse engineers of being bottlenecks in a completely out of control development environment is absurd. Swathes of developments should never have been allowed in the first instance. However, as we now know, planners don't give a shite.

EvotingMachine0197 wrote:

cactus flower wrote:

Developments larger than 2 houses in Dun Laoghaire Rathdown have been banned, due to lack of water services/treatment infrastructure.
Dublin City faces the same crisis of lack of capacity. Across the country developers have found in town after town that planning applications (made on zoned lands at a cost of many thousands) are refused for no reason other than lack of sanitary services. In many cases there will be a least a 2 to 3 year hiatus before there is any improvement.

Well about bloody time. I am sick of developement for developement's sake.

In town after town for the last decade, developements have been allowed that have served no other purpose that to create a channel for landowners and developers to make a fast one, regardless of the impact of the development on the locality, the locality's infrastructure or the people of that locality.

To accuse engineers of being bottlenecks in a completely out of control development environment is absurd. Swathes of developments should never have been allowed in the first instance. However, as we now know, planners don't give a shite.

So its cardboard boxes that we'll live in, is it? The quality of development and lack of vision in planning has been shocking. People still need somewhere to live. Quality and quantity aren't the same thing.

The idea of development for development's sake doesn't add up. The houses that have been built in towns and cities are being lived in and would not have been built if there wasn't a demand for them. The exception to that was development for tax incentives sake on the coast and in counties like Leitrim with no demand.
There is shocking overcrowding in areas like Quarryvale and Crumlin and a lot of people live in subdivided houses that are fire traps.

Ireland was hit with economic and population growth that was not foreseen. Consequently planners two years out of college were making decisions that will stand in concrete after they are dead and gone.

I am arguing for quality. But quantity has been winning for 10 years.

The planners allowed the quantity, without enforcing quality.

Quantity without quality makes a developer far more money than the inverse.

EvotingMachine0197 wrote:

I am arguing for quality. But quantity has been winning for 10 years.

The planners allowed the quantity, without enforcing quality.

Quantity without quality makes a developer far more money than the inverse.

My edit and your post crossed - but there was a reason for the quantity. Ireland went from 180 years of population decrease to a sharp increase in 10 years. If houses hadn't been built people would have been on the streets or with the in-laws.

A lot of what is called planning was controlled by engineers who decided on the road layouts of housing and prevented anything other than sprawling suburbs. Most planners aren't trained in urban design at all, and bright students turn into tick the box functionaries in a couple of years. Thanks to FF the whole lot was built without proper insulation and we'll be paying that ( and so will the environment ) for generations. The lack of good infrastructural planning in my view comes from the same sad system that created the substandard development you detest. In a few more years, there will be mass homelessness and they will build us a few more Ballymun Towers as though they had just been discovered for the first time.

Auditor #9 mentioned that Ennis was all out of water services infrastructure, as well as the places already mentioned in this thread.

Anywhere else where building is at a standstill because of lack of sewerage?

Auditor #9 mentioned another place, Ennis, as being out of capacity. I can add Dublin, Dun Laoghaire Rathdown, Thomastown in Kilkenny, Castlecomer in Kilkenny, Errill in County Laois. I can think of another ten villages.

Castlebar

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d0/Irish_breakfast.jpg/658px-Irish_breakfast.jpg

The problem with all development is the coordination of development with service provision. IMO Planning Services here and the UK have been lamentable failures in this respect. Yet to me this should be their main function.

Roads happen because the developer builds them, the local water and sewerage connection are there for the same reason as is telephone and any cable or gas connections.

Where the whole system breaks down is where the government is meant to coordinate. To coordinate and build, sewerage treatment plants, larger main sewers, clean water supplies, clinics, schools, new rail halts you need money and you need coordination and it just is not happening. It is immensely complicated but very doable, but these services need investment and the money needs to be found.

You also need to end much of the zoning nonsense and adopt a more liberal view of what people are allowed to do with their property without permission. That is how services happened in settled villages. Houses turn to offices and shops. You can't plan everything.

We can't take the approach that development is stopped and all development is bad. That is a nonsense.

With regards visual amenity; another area of failure, planners are simply not qualified and IMO have no idea where to start. Well to be fair to them the system does not favour coordination and quality. We are approving developments one lot at a time. So how do you fit that into an overall scheme without some detailed overall design and development proposal, its impossible. Again that needs investment. Who pays?

Irish planners have moved towards understanding the need for integrated action planning and there are some good examples.
Local government reform did away with County Engineers and now there is no one to co-ordinate infrastructure with planning at County Level.
It certainly doesn't happen at any other level. Lack of co-ordination was perhaps the biggest criticism of the Irish public services in the recent OECD report.

There's plenty more development coming on stream in Dun Laoghaire Rathdown and its immediate hinterland over the next five years. Whether it should be or not is a different matter.

johnfás wrote:

There's plenty more development coming on stream in Dun Laoghaire Rathdown and its immediate hinterland over the next five years. Whether it should be or not is a different matter.

The problem is there is not sewerage capacity for it and won't be for several years. DLR has issued a notice saying they can't permit anything larger than 2 houses.

They've accepted 850 odd new residential units to be built on the former Dun Laoghaire Golf Club site. I also know of a few other bodies who are selling off tracts of land within the county council and have had favourable meetings with the planners. Add to that the enormous development which has just got the go ahead in Bray, which although in Wicklow, very much borders Dun Laoghaire Rathdown and also the proposed large development in Shankill, which is in the county council.

The construction crash came in the nick of time for the local authorities and government. Their failure to plan ahead would otherwise have been horribly exposed. While it has been clear for years that more water services capacity would be needed, local authorities have done little to nothing about it and allowed all the existing capacity to be used up. National government have failed to fund sewerage treatment for decades. The new Dublin plant was overcapacity virtually from the day it was opened. There is a real prospect now that even the limited demand there is for construction will be at a standstill across most of the country as it can take several years to get a new system up and running. If local authorities and government didn't upgrade infrastructure during the boom, will they do it in a recession?

Quote :

From Archiseek - Lack of services has put city and its satellites on road to nowhere
The failure to provide adequate infrastructure will strangle our economy, writes Daniel McConnell, Sunday March 16 2008
As our economy tanks, with the government in exile, we reveal that despite all the rhetoric from Bertie Ahern and Brian Cowen, Ireland's economy is now in real danger of collapsing and we show how it's all our own fault.

Today, a Sunday Independent investigation reveals how Dublin, the bedrock of the Irish economy is being strangled by the effects of chronic planning problems and delays, and woefully inadequate infrastructure.

Crucially, our figures suggest that €20bn of vital project development investment has already been lost or substantially delayed because of the delays.

Our three-week investigation turned up two separate land study reports for the greater Dublin area, produced within the last 12 months, which give a damning overview of our farcical planning and building process.

The results of our survey suggest that planning foul-ups, red tape and county council inaction is set to cost Ireland dearly in terms of much-needed investment.

And its not just the capital that is feeling the pinch. Several key urban centres in the greater Dublin area have also had to introduce total bans on further development because of the abject lack of capacity to deal with intended projects.

The worst-affected area encompasses Dun Laoghaire- Rathdown, Cherrywood and Sandyford in south county Dublin. In 2004, a report produced for the Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown council earmarked Sandyford as a high-density urban centre, mixing commercial and residential development -- and providing much needed housing and revenue. Fast forward to 2008 and Sandyford is on life support. An unmitigated disaster choked by traffic, the area has major infrastructural and service deficits.

The problem is so bad that, within the last month, county manager Owen Keegan announced that -- due to the chronic deficiencies -- all projects larger than 2 houses in the local authority area would be banned.

In his report, Keegan said: "Significant additional work is needed in relation to foul drainage infrastructure, water supply and transportation infrastructure . . . Given these deficiencies, it would not be appropriate to grant permission for any further significant development."

Keegan's ban has been greeted with deep concern by some of the big players in Sandyford. The Beacon Clinic, whose expansion plans include a possible national children's hospital, is known to be outraged at the ban.

Other major firms like Microsoft, which has a massive hub in Sandyford, have also put new buildings on hold. Several high-rise towers are also in jeopardy.

Before the ban, several large-scale developments, said by the council to be crucial to Sandyford's future, had been postponed time and again due to administrative and appeal difficulties.

One example, was the rejuvenation of the MJ Flood site, adjacent to the Luas terminus and reservoir.

In 2005, planning was permitted for a 24-storey mixed-use development. Locals objected and the matter went to an Bord Pleanala. Three years later, no decision has been made.

The other major problem for Sandyford is the traffic. Despite being beside the M50, it is a notorious black spot. Many on the council have pointed the finger of blame at county manager Owen Keegan and his planners for the quagmire.

"The whole thing is a total mess. It is a disgrace how it has been allowed to go on. Over 20 years there has been no long-term thinking, no forward planning. We are retro fitting everything and we've cocked it up. Now the ban is in place, it is clear it is going to cost jobs," one FF councillor said this weekend.

Just down the road, Cherrywood is another major embarrassment for the Dun Laoghaire council. Zoned over a decade ago to accommodate up to 25,000 people, it too has been beset by delays as a result of serious infrastructural deficiencies.

Landowners and developers who bought land there were told in 2006 that a local area plan was imminent and would be in place by October of last year at the latest. However, the council has abandoned that plan and is "currently exploring other options", while the owners continue in limbo.

One highly placed construction industry source, told the Sunday Independent: "There is about €10bn ready to go into Cherrywood and it is all up in the air. What could be a good cash cow for the council is in serious risk of being lost".

Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown council, meanwhile, said plans for Cherrywood were under review, and news about its future would be forthcoming sometime next month.

It is not just in south Dublin that the planning problem is crippling progress. In all the capital's major satellite areas, similar blockages are being experienced. A prime example is the Kildare corridor -- including Naas, Sallins, Straffan and Newbridge -- which is earmarked for huge development.

A moratorium on planning is in place in this crucial location, however, because the Osberstown Wastewater treatment plant is at capacity -- and cannot be upgraded until at least 2011.It is estimated that at least 10,000 homes are on hold until the plant is upgraded.

According to a recent land study conducted by consultants DTZ for the Irish Home Builders Association, over 80 per cent of zoned land in counties like Meath and Kildare currently lacks services or adequate infrastructure.

In Dublin city, chronic shortages of water and subsequent development bans will be unavoidable within the next two years unless a major new source of water can be found. One suggestion is to divert water from the Shannon to Dublin, but a decision is required soon if the shortages are to be avoided.

Our investigation also reveals that An Bord Pleanala is failing massively to meet its targets of dealing with appeals within an 18-month time scale. Well over 65 per cent of cases are taking longer than that, with delays at every point

The DTZ report also found chronic problems in the roll out of public projects -- identifying a breakdown between public and private stakeholders in several key projects, which were causing unnecessary delays.

But it is not just the chaos at local level that is at fault. Nationally, firms are now facing an increasing barrage of red tape, which is hurting Ireland's chances of attracting investment. Speaking to the Sunday Independent, Jim Curran, head of research at ISME, which represents small firms, called on Brian Cowen to make Ireland a better place to do business.

"He must make Ireland more business friendly, particularly for smaller and medium size firms who want to invest but conditions have to become more favourable," he added.

cactus flower wrote:

EvotingMachine0197 wrote:

I am arguing for quality. But quantity has been winning for 10 years.

The planners allowed the quantity, without enforcing quality.

Quantity without quality makes a developer far more money than the inverse.

My edit and your post crossed - but there was a reason for the quantity. Ireland went from 180 years of population decrease to a sharp increase in 10 years. If houses hadn't been built people would have been on the streets or with the in-laws.

A lot of what is called planning was controlled by engineers who decided on the road layouts of housing and prevented anything other than sprawling suburbs. Most planners aren't trained in urban design at all, and bright students turn into tick the box functionaries in a couple of years. Thanks to FF the whole lot was built without proper insulation and we'll be paying that ( and so will the environment ) for generations. The lack of good infrastructural planning in my view comes from the same sad system that created the substandard development you detest. In a few more years, there will be mass homelessness and they will build us a few more Ballymun Towers as though they had just been discovered for the first time.

Populations don't increase sharply in 10 years. The quantity was primarily to meet the artificial demand caused by easy and cheap credit, the the expense of the home buyer, and the gain of the landowners and builders.

Sandyford is an absolutely horrible place. It is hard to see what is going on at Cherrywood at the moment, it appears to be nothing but three or four office blocks and then a single small enough housing development. I drive past it reguarly enough because it is on the way to my other half's house but it always seems very quiet.

EvotingMachine0197 wrote:

cactus flower wrote:

EvotingMachine0197 wrote:

I am arguing for quality. But quantity has been winning for 10 years.

The planners allowed the quantity, without enforcing quality.

Quantity without quality makes a developer far more money than the inverse.

My edit and your post crossed - but there was a reason for the quantity. Ireland went from 180 years of population decrease to a sharp increase in 10 years. If houses hadn't been built people would have been on the streets or with the in-laws.

A lot of what is called planning was controlled by engineers who decided on the road layouts of housing and prevented anything other than sprawling suburbs. Most planners aren't trained in urban design at all, and bright students turn into tick the box functionaries in a couple of years. Thanks to FF the whole lot was built without proper insulation and we'll be paying that ( and so will the environment ) for generations. The lack of good infrastructural planning in my view comes from the same sad system that created the substandard development you detest. In a few more years, there will be mass homelessness and they will build us a few more Ballymun Towers as though they had just been discovered for the first time.

Populations don't increase sharply in 10 years. The quantity was primarily to meet the artificial demand caused by easy and cheap credit, the the expense of the home buyer, and the gain of the landowners and builders.

I agree that cheap credit has caused an enormous problem, but it wasn't the cause of housing demand - not until 2007 at any rate.
The population went from 3.8 million to 4.2 million between the 1996 and 2006 (Census of Population). http://www.cso.ie/census/Census2006_Principal_Demographic_Results.htm

At the same time household size declined rapidly, with fewer people in the average household - this means there are more households per 100 people than previously and makes a big difference to household formation.The numbers in work in Ireland went from 1.2 million to 2 million between 1986 -2006 - admittedly 20 years not 10.

The housing boom in Ireland was demand driven up to 2007 - the baby boom generation grew up and formed households and got jobs so they didnt need to emigrate. Then immigration began with people coming home and new people coming to take up jobs. Even before the boom there was a backlog of people waiting to buy a house as they hadnt been able to get one in the 1980s.

The demand was not articifial. The most you could say is that some young single people bought flats and houses because they felt they could afford to. Up until 2007 there were simply not enough houses to meet the demand, and that, combined with cheap credit and high employment/high wages, pushed up the price. Since 1970 more houses have been constructed that there was demand for, credit has got more expensive and employment is less secure. The result has been tumbling prices and a stop to construction.

According to the NESC Report 'Housing in Ireland: Performance and Policy' (2004) the main reasons for the rate in increase in house prices are:

• Quote :

  
  

  
  
  • Demographic and household formation changes including immigration
    
  • Economic growth with particular impact on employment growth
    
  • Increased disposable income and lower direct taxes
    
  • Low mortgage interest rates
    
  • A shortage of serviced developed land
    
  • Increases in the price of development land
    
  • Labour shortages
    
  • Investor and general speculative activity
    

  
  
  

It is really quite easy to build sewerage treatment plants. The bigger problem is upgrading the size of sewers in some areas and directing them in the direction of the new treatment plant. A lot easier to do if you plan in advance and a real pigs ear if done after the event.

Also many of the old sewerage systems are loaded with surface water. Perfectly clean water directed into the sewer and then has to be treated. During heavy rain this can cause system overloads. We would do well to encourage rainwater harvesting to flush toilets and insist that renovations separate foul from surface water so that at some future date we can properly sort out safe routes for surface water.

Local authorities built treatment plants on small plots of land - now they need to expand them they have to negotiate with the landowner of the surrounding land to extend the site. It all adds to the time and cost.