SOUTH DUBLIN COUNTY councillors have voted to sell a 48-acre site in Dublin 22 to film company Lens Media Ltd for €26.4 million.

The company will seek planning permission to build a film and television studio on the site with 12 sound studios, 100,000 square feet of office space and 100,000 square feet of workshop space.

Lens Media is a joint venture between former executive chairman of Windmill Lane Studios James Morris and film producers Alan Moloney and Gary Levinsohn.

Moloney had an executive producer credit on the Academy Award-nominated Saoirse Ronan-vehicle Brooklyn, while Levisohn received an Oscar nomination for his work as a producer on Saving Private Ryan.

The initial investment in the development by Lens Media is expected to be €125 million.

A spokesperson for Lens Media said, “The Grange Castle Media Park will be a world-class facility. Its size and specification will help to propel Ireland into a major world-class player in the screen creative industries, creating thousands of long term and sustainable jobs for Dublin, and all over the country, as we re-emerge from the coronavirus pandemic.”

Lens had previously been involved in plans to develop a film studio at the former Irish Glass Bottle site in Ringsend, Dublin 4.

Details of that project came to light in 2016 when U2 frontman Bono lobbied then-environment minister Alan Kelly to promote the idea of a world-class film studio in Dublin”, according to the Lobbying Register.