'Cork is very much a priority' as Land Development Agency sets its sites on Cork

LDA chief executive John Coleman said “Cork is very much a priority” for the state agency”.

“We think Dublin is largely built out. There may be infill sites available, but the opportunity in Cork, particularly in the docklands, is massive, and one that we anticipate playing a big role in.” 

Substantial LDA housing delivery is also earmarked for the Port of Cork’s Tivoli landbank which could potentially support 5,000 homes.

“Development of the Tivoli docklands is still a good bit away, but we are working on it. It will be 5,000 [housing units], so it’s quite a big development pipeline,” Mr Coleman said.

The agency is already active on a number of sites in the city, including at the former St Kevin’s Hospital site in Shanakiel where the first of 266 social and affordable homes are expected to be delivered by summer of next year, and at Horgan’s Quay, where developers BAM/Clarendon Properties are 12 weeks into a 24 month build programme that will deliver 302 apartments. It’s the first residential development of scale in the docklands, to which the LDA has committed “well in excess of €100m”.

Separately, the LDA recently agreed a deal with the ESB in Wilton for the transfer of a 2.7 hectare greenfield site near Wilton Shopping Centre, where it plans to build 350 homes, with construction starting early next year and a target of late 2028 for delivery.

Further out of town, in Kilbarry, 41 hectares of IDA-owned land have been identified for transfer to the LDA, with a longterm plan to deliver 1,500 homes.

The development of 5,000 homes in Tivoli docklands will require the activities of the Port of Cork to move on. ”But it will happen and will probably follow after the docklands work that we are doing,” Mr Coleman said.

The current docklands scheme at Horgan’s Quay will deliver cost-rental apartments – at least 25% below the local market rate - as well as “some social” housing, with the numbers yet to be finalised. Some are also likely to be sold to owner/occupiers, in line with what developers Bam/Clarendon have sought.

“The broad plan at the moment is that about one third will be held for affordable cost rental, about a third for social housing and we are considering that a third could be sold to owner occupiers under the government Croí Cónaithe (cities) scheme (the government bridges the viability cost between what the apartments cost to build and the sale price). That can be worked out later on, but that’s our line of thinking,” Mr Coleman said. He said apartment blocks built by the LDA will remain in state ownership, that there was “no plan at all to sell them onto investors”.

“They will be held as public housing, but what we might do is borrow from the European Investment Bank or someone like that to allow us to do more. But we won’t be ceding ownership,” Mr Coleman said.

In relation to the LDA’s other sites of interest in the docklands, the ESB’s landbank in Centre Park Road and the Bord na Móna site, Mr Coleman is hopeful the transfer of lands, already approved by the government, will take place next year.

“I’d say that could happen in 2025 but we are trying to work through technical issues at the moment. The power station burnt coal and oil for many years and we are trying to work out how bad the contamination is.

“You might have the scrape significant amounts of material off the ground and take it away and dispose of it, so it’s not a straightforward site from that perspective. But the other one [Bord na Móna] is probably easier.” By choosing sites at opposite ends of the docklands – Horgan's Quay in the North Docks and the ESB/Bord na Móna sites in the South Docks, near the Marina - Mr Coleman said they hoped to generate further development in between.

“From Horgan’s Quay upto Páirc Uí Chaoimh, you have Glenveagh, Bord na Móna, the ESB. And when these places are planned, there’s a concept called leap-frogging, where you try and develop at both ends, which tends to draw in development in the middle, so that’s why we are interested in both ends,” Mr Coleman said.

Mr Coleman said they weren’t limited to working with housebuilders on their panel of 15, which includes Glenveagh, O’Callaghan Properties and the O’Flynn Group.

“There’s nothing to stop us dealing with other developers even if they are not on the panel, the panel just makes it easier. But there’s nothing to stop us dealing with any credible developers”. He said they’d had “regular engagements” with John Cleary Developments (JCD) who are not on the panel.

“The great thing about Cork is that there are very good developers in Cork that we can work with, so it’s really well placed to capitalise on the substantial level of government funding that there is available for housing”.

That “substantial” government funding included a €1.25bn boost in this week’s Budget, in addition to €3.35bn already committed to an agency that has become the country’s biggest housebuilder. Mr Coleman said €1.7bn of the LDA’s funds are so far committed “so we’ve good additional spending power still”.

He added that there’s “a number of opportunities in front of us that should take that figure to about €2.5bn in the next six months”.

Asked if he was concerned about a change of Government with an election looming – Sinn Féin has said it will replace with the LDA with an active land management agency – Mr Coleman said he was not.

“I think we enjoy decent support across the political spectrum. I think at the end of the day, it’s all about production.

“It’s totally up to every government to come up with its own policy, but at the end of the day, homes need to be built and that takes a technical skillset that we’ve assembled.” The LDA, set up to maximise the delivery of social and affordable housing on public lands, now has 200 staff).

Mr Coleman said he would ”be making a pitch to anyone who is in government to maintain the development platform of the LDA, especially when you consider we will have commitments by the time the programme for government comes out for the next government, of over €2.5bn”.

“We’ll have between 15/20 active projects underway, thousands of cost rental homes underway and I don’t think makes sense to upset that trajectory.”