New "City" for Swords while 40,000 apartments lie vacant in Dublin City

New Plans revealed to develop a new 'city of Swords'
26th May 2008

Fingal County Council has unveiled plans to build a new city of over 120,000 people in Swords. Planners want a third-level university campus, a private hospital and a bus service.

Fingal County Manager David O'Connor said he is not concerned about the impact of present economic difficulties on the development as the plans are projected more than 20 years into the future.

The Manager states that Fingal has a booming population, and is set to benefit from Terminal 2 at Dublin Airport, the proposed new port at Bremore and the Ballymun IKEA development, as well as the proposed new "Metro North" railway line. If built as planned, it will have nine stops in the Fingal area.

Mr O'Connor stated that Swords will merge into Drumcondra in the same way that Dundrum has merged into Ranelagh.

Fingal Co. Council intends to double the region's employment to over 66,000 jobs to ensure that the new city of Swords does not become a commuter town, how this is to be achieved is apparently left unspecified.

The council is planning a (private) hospital development and it is understood it is in talks with two third-level institutions to site a campus near Swords.


Comment:
The proposals are to merge Swords and Drumcronda into a gigantic sprawl, eliminating the remaining green belt and by so doing, further extend the suburbs of Dublin into Meath and Kildare. Plans to merge the suburbs of Lucan and Clondalkin have proved disastrous in planning terms. The proposed new port at Bremore, advertised as relieving the congestion at Dublin Port, will simply accelerate the suburbisation of Co.Meath in particular, with Meath County Council rezoning 240 acres of agricultural land for "industrial and logistics development" in Gormanstown, Co. Meath. The solution for Dublin's planning difficulties is not more of the same, but the recognition that the time has some for a halt to the continued development of the agricultural land of Dublin and Meath counties. 2006 Census figures reveal that 220,000 houses and apartments lie vacant, while auctioneers figures for early show 40,000 apartments vacant in Dublin City. Who will occupy these proposed new houses?

Sources:

http://www.rte.ie/news/2008/0526/metro.html

http://www.droghedaport.ie/cms/publish/article_231.shtml

http://www.irishauction.info/2008/01/21/40000-apartments-vacant-in-dublin-iavi/

http://tara-foundation.org/blog/?p=92

http://dublinopinion.com/2007/08/18/irish-housing-watching-a-fat-man-dance/

New Housing Developments Proposed for Meath when at least 220,000 Houses and Apartments lie vacant across Ireland

Central Statistics Office (CSO) statistics reveal that at least 220,000 houses and apartments are lying vacant across Ireland. The figures were published in 2007 and were available last year but only recently mentioned in the national press. With an increase in rent of up to 20% in the last 12 months, 41,600 apartments and 174,900 houses remain unoccupied. These figures do not include the 50,000 vacant holiday homes around Ireland, or the 30,000 other temporarily vacant properties around the country. The 2006 CSO Report states that: “Approximately 266,000 residences were vacant at the time of the census while in a further 30,000 cases the household was either enumerated elsewhere or temporarily absent from the State.”

15% of Ireland's available housing is now vacant. Developers in Ireland are currently building houses and apartments at a rate of 20 units per 1,000/population. This is almost ten times the average European rate, at between two and four housing units per 1,000 people.

The 2006 figures indicate that 11,000 housing units are vacant in the Fingal Co. Council region of Dublin, 10,000 in the Dublin City Council region, 3,000 in South Dublin and nearly 2,400 in Dun Laoghaire Rathdown. In Cork City, 4,000 properties are vacant. Limerick has over 3,000 empty houses and apartments, Galway around 1,300 and Waterford over 1,200 vacant properties.

In total, 174,900 houses, 41,600 apartments and flats, and 50,000 holiday homes: 266,500 properties.

The 2002 census found 104,000 properties vacant, already a substantial number. Comparing the rise in vacancy rates between 2002 and 2006, a spokesman for the CSO told the Sunday Tribune, "In the case of these vacant homes, the (census) enumerator would have gone back to the houses repeatedly to ensure they were actually vacant. . . The vacancy rate has doubled in a four year period. There is evidence that there are a lot of houses out there vacant."

In a related development, house prices in Dublin have now fallen by 10 per cent on average in 2007 compared with 2006, according to a report by the Irish Auctioneers and Valuers’ Institute (IAVI).

There seems to be evidence that vacancies are steadily climbing since 2006, since second-hand apartments are more difficult to sell than second-hand houses, with falls of up to 17 per cent, and that up to 40,000 apartments are vacant in the capital.


Sources:

(Irish Auction Info):

http://www.irishauction.info/2008/01/21/40000-apartments-vacant-in-dublin-iavi/

(Vacant Housing Doubled in Ireland, Una Mullally, Sunday Tribune, 24th May 2008): http://www.tribune.ie/article.tvt?_scope=TribuneFTF&id=109701&SUBCAT=&SUBCATNAME=&DT=13/01/2008%2000:00:00&keywords=galway&FC=

(Irish Census 2006):

http://www.cso.ie/census/Census2006_Volume6.htm

(Irish Housing: Watching a Fat Man Dance, August 18th 2007, Conor McCabe). Dublin Opinion Blog http://dublinopinion.com/2007/08/18/irish-housing-watching-a-fat-man-dance/

Diageo to sell half of St. James Brewery Killenny and Dundalk to Close

On the 9th May 2008, Diageo announced that it is to close its breweries at Kilkenny and Dundalk, significantly reduce its brewing capacity at St James's Gate and build a new brewery on the outskirts of Dublin under a plan announced today.

The company said it would invest €650 million (£520 million) between 2009 and 2013 in the restructuring.

The renovation of the St James's Gate brewing operations is expected to cost around €70 million and will see the volume of Guinness brewed there fall from around one billion pints a year, to just over 500 million. The drinks giant was considering closing the Guinness brewery at St James's Gate, on the banks of the Liffey in Dublin and moving production to a new site outside the city.

The future of the plant, once the biggest brewery in the world, is tied up with a review of Diageo's total operations in Ireland, where it has four breweries and employs 2,200.

Guinness and St James's have been synonymous since 1759 but with the plant showing its age and the surrounding area reserved for development, Diageo sees the opportunity to finance the construction of a modern plant on a greenfield site, possibly close to the planned new planned new Dublin port at Bremore.

The St. James Brewery site has a potential price tag of around €3bn (£2bn), if it were sold on the open market.

Diageo is wrestling with falling Guinness business - down 7pc in Europe in the six months to the end of December.

Diageo said the project’s cost could be minimized by selling land at the Dundalk, Kilkenny and Dublin sites valued at an estimated 500 million euros ($775 million).

This plant will serve the Irish and British markets and will be based on the Thomas St side of the site. The company said this would ensure that every pint of Guinness sold in Ireland would be brewed here. Approximately half of the 55 acre site will then be sold if and when the five-year project is complete.

Around 65 staff will remain in brewing operations at St James's Gate with about 100 others due to transfer to the new Dublin plant. The Great Northern Brewery in Dundalk mainly produces Guinness’ sister beers — Harp lager and Smithwick ale — as well as continental European lagers under license, including Denmark’s Carlsberg and Germany’s Warsteiner.

The St. Francis Abbey Brewery in Kilkenny produces Irish-brand ales and U.S. brand Budweiser for the Irish market, where lighter beers, ciders, wines and vodka-based drinks have made steady inroads versus Guinness over the past decade.

The new suburban Dublin brewery could take over the workload of both closing plants. It also would produce Guinness for continental European and global export, as well as the secret-recipe "essence" extract that Guinness ships to its nearly 50 breweries worldwide.

Although the company has yet to announce the exact location of its new brewery, the company says it will have a capacity of around nine million hectolitres, or around three times that of the refurbished St James's Gate site. This new brewery will produce Guinness for export and ales and lagers for the Irish market.

Diageo said when the two Dublin breweries are fully operational in five years time it will transfer brewing out of the Kilkenny and Dundalk breweries and close these plants. This move will result in “a net reduction in staff of around 250”, the company said.

The company employs 800 people in its brewing operation and a total of 2,500 in the Republic and Northern Ireland.

Diageo’s smallest beer-related facility in Ireland, in the city of Waterford, will continue to produce the "essence" extract. But supply director O’Hagan said staff there would be cut to 18 from 27.

Operations at its Waterford brewery will be "streamlined" as part of the re-organisation leading to "some reduction in output". the current workforce of 27 in Waterford would be reduced to “around 18” but Diageo was unable to confirm the extent of the output reduction.

The company says the St James's Gate site it proposes to sell and the Kilkenny and Dundalk sites have an estimated value of €510 million.

Diageo shares rose 1.3 percent to 1,041 pence ($20.27) on Friday in London.



Sources:

http://www.bostonherald.com/business/general/view.bg?articleid=1092912&format=&page=2&listingType=biz

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2007/06/19/cnguinness119.xml

http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/breaking/2008/0509/breaking2.html?via=mr