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We're in a housing crisis. We need to double the height of Dublin's planned new town

The capital’s housing plans require much greater ambition, writes Paul O’Donoghue.

baile-bogain-2-fade9900-d7d2-4ce2-a026-89e79f66367c-296x260 Plans for Ballybogan Dublin City Council Dublin City Council

“DESPERATE TIMES CALL for… level-headed measures” could be the slogan for Dublin’s newest planned town, Ballyboggan.

Not the most exciting of phrases – because, while Ballyboggan is certainly welcome, it’s not the most exciting of developments.

Well, perhaps that’s a little harsh.

Dublin City Council has proposed building the ‘new town’ of Ballyboggan on the site of the Dublin Industrial Estate, opposite Glasnevin Cemetery on the north side of the city.

Three quarters of the land would be zoned for residential use, with the rest for enterprise and community uses.

It’s estimated about 6,000 houses could be delivered. With the typical household size being three people, this means about 15,000 people could be housed.

And these residents won’t be living just anywhere. The site is just 3km from Dublin city centre, with excellent transport links including a rail and Luas connection.

So the plan is good news. And there’s a positive in seeing Dublin City Council taking the initiative with a major residential development.

So why the snarky slogan suggestion?

It’s because while the Ballyboggan proposal is a good one, it could and should be much more ambitious.

Most of the proposed buildings on the site would be three to four storeys, with a small number going as high as eight.

Simply put, we should be doing much more with undeveloped sites located in prime areas near Dublin city centre.

Housing crisis demands

Rather than aiming to build 6,000 homes, we could look at building far more by increasing the average height of the new buildings. The default should be six to eight storeys.

Why? Doubling the height in this way would lead to much greater density, delivering far more homes.

The scale of the housing crisis demands it.

The number of new homes built in Ireland has been stuck at about 30,000 per year for the last three years.

For much of that period, house price inflation has been running at about 10%. An estimated seven in ten 25-year-olds live at home, while many older renters face living in near poverty in retirement.

In the face of such an enormous problem, state agencies should be bold.

misty-january-sunset-over-glasnevin-round-tower-and-cemetery The new town will be beside Glasnevin, famous for its cemetery. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

House price inflation

Previously, this column has looked at the impact building new homes will have on house prices. At a simplistic level, some studies have found that a 1% increase in the number of homes in an area lowers prices by up to 2%.

As of the most recent census in 2022, the Dublin city area had about 250,000 homes.

So Ballyboggan would be a 2.5% increase in housing stock, which theoretically would be a 5% reduction in house prices. Sounds like a pretty good result from just one housing development.

But then, consider that Dublin house prices rose by over 8% in 2024 alone. All else being equal, Ballyboggan would just slow inflation, not stop it. And only for a single year.

Of course, there are other housing developments being built in the Dublin city area. The point of this mental exercise is to show that while 6,000 houses might sound like a lot, its impact on housing affordability might not actually be as big as expected. 

There aren’t many residential sites left in the Dublin city area with the potential to deliver as many homes as Ballyboggan. 

Going six to eight storeys would likely allow closer to 10,000 homes to be built. This has also been found to be the ideal height to make apartments economically viable for developers.

But besides that, we should be absolutely maximising housing delivery.

And yet, a look at the Ballyboggan master plan doesn’t give the impression that officials appreciate the urgency needed.

For a start, it says the proposal “represents the implementation of the National Planning Framework (NPF) at a local level in the city”. The NPF is a national state document which had housing targets based on 2016 population figures, which are now seriously out of date.

While the NPF was updated in April 2025, the Ballyboggan master plan was first published in April 2024 and finalised in October.

dublin-transportation-hub-for-tram-train-and-bus-in-broombridge-station-illustrates-lower-number-of-commuters-during-epidemics-covid-19-coronavirus The Broombridge transport hub will serve Ballybogan. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

Low-rise limitations

The document also uses language which points to how slightly higher buildings are generally viewed negatively.

Talking about an area of Ballyboggan where only buildings of up to four storeys are planned, it says that lower building heights “are required adjacent in order to safeguard the residential amenity of this mature residential area”.

Again, it’s understandable why the council would think this way. They want to minimise local objections and get the project moving faster.

But it points to a big problem in Dublin. Most of the capital already has ‘mature’ buildings with low heights. This is true even smack bang in the city centre, where there are plenty of two storey buildings.

If we were to limit ourselves to only building low-rise in these ‘mature’ areas, we’re saying there’s almost nowhere that we can build high rise developments.

And again, that’s only if you even consider eight storeys ‘tall’. This is completely standard in many continental European cities, which tend to have better density and more affordable housing than Dublin.

Really, it’s doubtful whether there should be height limits at all. The masterplan talks about concerns of “monolithic slab blocks” if large standalone buildings were constructed. But does this concern really outweigh the needs of people without a place to live?

More density would also mean the homes which are built would take up less space. People will rightly complain of issues that mass house-building causes in an area. Traffic is the most obvious one, as well as the strain on local services, such as schools and doctors.

Building up means there’s more space available for the likes of public transport. It would also mean extra people could be housed while maintaining the plans in the masterplan for communal areas such as parks.

Time to be bold

Finally, Irish housing consultations tend to have plenty of concern for the people who already live in an area. But we don’t think too much about those who would like to live somewhere, and need to be housed.

With that in mind, it’s worth looking at the public consultation for the Ballyboggan plan. The bulk of the submissions to public consultations around new housing developments are normally from people objecting to the proposals.

However, with Ballyboggan, it’s the opposite. Plenty of people have written to Dublin City Council expressing disappointment with the lack of ambition for the site.

The submissions article articulate the issue well, here’s a small sample:

  • “While it is encouraging to see the residential development… the proposed densities are completely inadequate for this prime site. The plan would represent a huge missed opportunity to provide homes for thousands of people at a time of overwhelming demand, particularly in Dublin.”
  • “While development on this large plot of land is welcome, it is very disheartening to see the densities and heights set so low for such a strategic and well placed area with great public transport and close to the city centre.”
  • “The density does not reflect its location or the scale of the housing crisis.”

Although there were only several dozen submissions at the time of writing, the fact that most of them are in favour of increased height and density is noteworthy.

It’s time for Dublin City Council, and Irish local state bodies in general, to be bolder in tackling the housing crisis. The time to try to fix this by slowly building out miles of low-density housing estates has passed.

Tens of thousands of new homes are needed, and the only way to do that in a city as small as Dublin is to build up. This of course has to be planned around – providing good transport, access to facilities, and so on.

Ballyboggan could and should be a model of this approach. Slow and steady hasn’t worked. Dramatic change is needed.

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    Mute I invented the @
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    Oct 9th 2018, 7:26 AM

    Sure. The same Bellingcat that’s run by Eliot Higgins, the same Eliot Higgins that’s a fellow of the Atlantic Council….

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    Mute Philip Exley
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    Oct 9th 2018, 7:49 AM

    @I invented the @: ahh, in the face of all the evidence that keeps tumbling out and in the face of the utterly ludicrous sightseeing cover story with which the Russians insulted everyone’s intelligence…..you choose to believe it’s a frame up.
    I hope you get a good exchange rate for your roubles.

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    Mute Donnacha Bhoicaire
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    Oct 9th 2018, 8:29 AM

    @I invented the @: dont be talking nonsense now. Caught out end of…

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    Mute Patrick J. O'Rourke
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    Oct 9th 2018, 9:18 AM

    @I invented the @: one thing is for certain, in that if it was a Russian operation the last people they would have used would have been Russians. If you believe this garbage from Bellingcat I feel sorry for you.

    22
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    Mute Boyne Sharky
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    Oct 9th 2018, 10:29 AM

    @I invented the @: So, if I understand your logic, a truth can’t be considered a truth unless… what exactly?

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    Mute Philip Exley
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    Oct 9th 2018, 2:15 PM

    @Patrick J. O’Rourke: they should clearly consider recruiting idiots like you then. I assume you’re not Russian?

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    Mute Mark Jones
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    Oct 9th 2018, 7:38 AM

    Maybe it was the Russians maybe it wasn’t, who cares. It’s not like MI5 or the CIA don’t send assassin’s into other countries to murder people. Pretty sick of all this “The big bad Russians” stuff at this stage.

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    Mute Noel James Doherty
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    Oct 9th 2018, 8:20 AM

    @Mark Jones: all the big boy’s have blood on they’re hands down through the year’s, no more so than the UN & their late intervention in the Balkans not so long ago. It was these lads surely, but what’s going to happen now? An elite crack group of operatives into Russia to get these two, pfft not a hope

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    Mute Liam O’Conchubhair
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    Oct 9th 2018, 9:12 AM

    @Mark Jones: that’s blatant whataboutism, you’re deflecting criticism of Russia by bringing up the CIA and MI5

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    Mute TamuMassif2019
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    Oct 10th 2018, 12:36 AM

    @Mark Jones: They sent spies into the IRA to join the IRA and used this to kill British soldiers with the blessing of the head of the IRA and other times without. In British intelligence even their own citizens are expendable for a result? Have people forgotten the Gilford 4 or Birmingham 6 or the Monaghan and Dublin bombings or even their shoot to kill policies? Even the British Intelligence trained the CIA in torture as well as created the term “Black Propaganda”.

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    Mute TamuMassif2019
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    Oct 10th 2018, 12:43 AM

    @Liam O’Conchubhair: Remember that it was the CIA who trained and put into power Bin Laden, the Taliban, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein, Pinochet, the birth of Isis and the replacement of 50 so called Communist South American governments after WW2. They also created the Iran mess in the mid 1950′s in Iran that has created the Iran of today. How many times have they tried to kill Castro and how many times has the CIA been caught working with the mafia in the US as well as drug running?

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    Mute Seán Ó Briain
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    Oct 9th 2018, 8:33 AM

    Watch all the Putinbots swarm here trying to spread doubt and lies. They’ll attack the source or deflect and say it doesn’t matter. It does matter. A highly dangerous poison was used which killed and innocent woman. If it happened in Ireland wed think differently.

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    Mute Donal Desmond
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    Oct 9th 2018, 1:32 PM

    @Seán Ó Briain: If it had happened in Ireland nothing would have been done. Since time began intelligence services from all countries have used whatever methods nessecery to protect their country. C.I A., British intelligence, K.G.B. have been responsible for thousands of deaths for years.

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    Mute mattoid
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    Oct 9th 2018, 10:49 PM

    @Seán Ó Briain:
    Although it’s notable that as facts have been uncovered and the “Russia didn’t do it” line has become untenable, the narrative for many of them has shifted to “Well so what if Russia did it, every government does it”…..

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    Mute mattoid
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    Oct 9th 2018, 10:52 PM

    Sometimes it’s hard to tell the Putinbots apart from the useful idiots on here.
    Some are deliberately spreading disinformation and some are just deluded, but they sound much the same in practice…

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    Mute Cormac Ó Braonáin
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    Oct 9th 2018, 9:40 AM

    Bellingcat lol. Might as well be reporting the ‘Syrian Observatory for Human Rights’.

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    Mute Diaspora'd
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    Oct 9th 2018, 2:29 PM

    @Cormac Ó Braonáin: apart Putin himself announcing it was a GRU operation what source or agency’s evidence would you believe?

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    Mute Cormac Ó Braonáin
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    Oct 9th 2018, 3:07 PM

    @Diaspora’d: not one that was directly set up for propaganda purposes might be a start.

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    Mute TamuMassif2019
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    Oct 10th 2018, 12:30 AM

    @Cormac Ó Braonáin: Bell*ndcat as some call him?

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    Mute Diaspora'd
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    Oct 10th 2018, 1:45 AM

    @Cormac Ó Braonáin: I take it then none apart from Putin himself would convince you..

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    Mute Liam O’Conchubhair
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    Oct 9th 2018, 9:17 AM

    All the deflection and whataboutism done by commenters here. Ridiculous.

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    Mute Barry O Toole
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    Oct 9th 2018, 12:56 PM

    @Liam O’Conchubhair: dont think its deflection liam people are merely questioning elements of this a lot of it doesnt add up

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    Mute Philip Exley
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    Oct 9th 2018, 2:58 PM

    @Barry O Toole:
    Answer me this…
    Were the Skripals attacked?
    Did another innocent individual die?
    Were two Russians filmed visiting the area?
    Do you think they flew all the way from Moscow to see Salisbury cathedral?
    Do you think, having gone all that way they went back to London on the first trip because it was too slushy in Salisbury (clue..it wasn’t).
    If you think it doesn’t add up because they were so amateurish I’d say this. They know full well that once they were back in Russia they’d be untouchable and that they could rely on gullible fools to give credence to their ridiculous protestations of innocence and cries of “there’s no evidence” in the face of….all the evidence.
    Do you also believe the Russians just kicked out of Holland were innocent? Maybe they’d gone to have an extended look at the tulips?

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    Mute Barry O Toole
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    Oct 9th 2018, 5:44 PM

    I am sceptical of the narrative being peddled thats all there are many actors in this drama who knows what the truth is

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    Mute Mark Mc Steve
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    Oct 9th 2018, 1:36 PM

    Who actually believes this ha

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    Mute TamuMassif2019
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    Oct 10th 2018, 12:26 AM

    How and why was it Bellingcat who discovered this and no one else as in government bodies???

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    Mute mattoid
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    Oct 10th 2018, 8:38 AM

    @TamuMassif2019:
    What makes you think government bodies didn’t know it from a relatively early stage?

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