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INSPECTIONS HAVE IDENTIFIED problems at the development for Dublin City Council’s flagship social and affordable housing scheme.
The Oscar Traynor housing project in Coolock, which is being constructed by private developer Glenveagh, is intended to deliver more than 800 homes under social, affordable and cost-rental schemes.
However, some of the works on the site have been paused after issues were raised during the course of inspections.
Dublin City Council’s chief executive Richard Shakespeare updated councillors on the situation at a meeting of the council yesterday evening.
Site inspections were carried out on 28 May, 3 July, 27 August, 15 October and 17 December. Concerns were subsequently raised regarding the compliance of the works with Building Regulations.
Shakespeare informed councillors that “concerns were raised with Glenveagh site management and the Assigned Certifier that the works were not progressing in a workmanlike manner in accordance with the requirements of the Building Regulations”.
“It is essential that where defects are identified that they are dealt with promptly and comprehensively,” Shakespeare said.
He said that Glenveagh Developments is “engaging with the process” and “continuing investigations on site to identify all potential issues including pausing of some works to allow for these investigations to be carried out”.
Discussions are ongoing to agree what works are required to rectify the non-compliant elements.
Those works will “need to be carried out by Glenveagh in a timely manner”, Shakespeare said.
“Due to the scale and importance of this large housing development the Building Control Authority has prioritised inspection of this development,” he said.
“Building Control Officers will continue regular, routine inspections over the coming weeks, months and through to completion of the project, to ensure adequate public oversight is provided and provide the necessary confidence that the requirements of the Building Regulations will be achieved.”
“It is understood increased resources have been provided on site by Glenveagh in terms of supervision and site management which is very welcome considering this scale and breadth of this large 17 ha site.
Councillors voted in favour of the housing development back in November 2021.
853 homes were proposed for the site, made up of 341 social homes (40%), 341 cost-rentals (40%) and 171 affordable-purchase homes (20%).
The council selected Glenveagh to construct the residential units along with associated infrastructural works, commercial units and open spaces through a procurement process.
Some councillors criticised the decision at the time as they wanted to see the project managed publicly rather than being handed to a private developer.
The project came to attention again last year when it emerged that the prices for the ‘affordable housing’ scheme in the area were as high as €475,000 for a three-bedroom home.
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Ossian. If it’s anything like the way you introduced ‘Deposit/Return’, it’s doomed to failure.
I had a look at their website. They are offering a laptop for €499, which was released 5 years ago. Not good value.
@Donal Ronan: the DRS has been a massive success
@Pat Hazzard: For whom?
@Pat Hazzard: Gee Pat, I thought I might have a bit more time, before the Government boys got in to work.
Are you there, since the Government Information Service days.
@Pat Hazzard: if you like queuing in the rain and having your home full of plastic bottles. The idea is to reduce the amount of plastics we use, not just a revenue source. Manufacturers should be using different materials in their production of bottles.
@Colette Byrne: You’re not allowed say that about private businesses!! The fact that most of Tescos packaging isn’t recyclable is just not a problem okay.
@Pat Hazzard: It’s been hugely embraced by consumers /s
@Thesaltyurchin: It’s not peculiar to Tesco, but it’s very random across products in any shop.
As a example in frozen, Supervalu’s brand of chicken chicken goujons are in a bag that is properly recyclable in a domestic green bin, but their chips or party foods aren’t.
Of course I know that the different products that have store branding aren’t made by them, they are ‘specially produced for’, but they have enough control to dictate what the packaging says and is made of.
@Pat Hazzard: How so ? It’s a double tax on every plastic bottle you use.
VAT and another one when you need to actually bring them back, spending money and time for it.
It’s a giant scam when we already pay a crazy amounts each month for bins to RECYCLE.
@Donal Ronan: I just had a look at their site too for laptops at 500€. All 4 are 5 year old models, which does make sense regarding how corporate cycles their purchases.
They are all fairly solid business models like Thinkpad or Elitebook, with the bog standard type of specs of an i5 cpu, 16gb ram, 256gb ssd.. except for one model of a Thinkpad that has touchscreen, an i7 and a 512gb ssd (it’s labelled Scratch & Dent). They all have a Win11 Pro licence.
They are all overpriced by about 50%,those models are worth around 300€ to 350€ even with a Pro license, but there is a certain value add with having a 1 to 3 year warranty from a place that can swap out a device with another from inventory within a few days. Businesses do like that more compared to a consumer that browses ebay.
@Alex: Not accurate. The deposit on the plastic bottles is refundable, and the benefit is plastic being recycled and not being dumped on the roadside. Blowing your preposterous dog-whistle.
@Nick Vasilakis: The problem with everything in Ireland, is we don’t know how to implement plans properly.
You have Ossian Smyth saying ‘ customers will return them when doing their shopping’. No extra travelling to dispose of them.
Then you have the boss of Deposit/Return coming out with the statement in the last week, that the system is busier at the end of week, that consumers should use it a different time.
You couldn’t make it up.
@Alex: Yeah. From the beginning of the domestic green bins, I’ve been paying increasing amounts while fastidiously separating and cleaning items that go into it. Those charges are inevitably going to rise further since the value of what is being collected in them has dramatically lowered. Cans and clear plastic bottles in particular are where they made the profit.
I seem to regularly be unfortunate enough, that when just pop down to the shop for a few beers and returning my empties (that despite rinsing and draining are magnets for fruit flies), that there’s only one working machine, and the person using it has 3 full garbage bags of possible returns.
I’m all for types like cleaners or security making some extra money by bringing stuff from the workplace bins instead of them getting trashed ( I would if still worked some places), but it does get a bit annoying when there has obviously been no attempt to check or drain in advance, and my 10 minute excursion turns into a near 1 hour one.
@Nick Vasilakis: I will concede the point that I rarely now see cans or bottles by the roadside, now it’s just a lot of fast food packaging, coffee cups, crisp bags and (surprisingly frequently) Harribo sweet bags.
@Nick Vasilakis: What it is doing is supporting the plastics manufacturers and their recycling scam.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/feb/15/recycling-plastics-producers-report
Recycling plastics is harmful to the environment, and adds to the problem of Climate Change, instead of helping to reduce it.
And now the state is forcing people to support this scam at some personal cost, instead of putting the costs onto the producers, thus encouraging the producer to reduce plastic use and to find sustainable alternatives.
@ben wu: I’m sure that when the government comes knocking, the price of them will go up even more.
@ItWasLikeThatWhenIGotHere: I don’t fully agree with the overarching conclusion, but there is certainly a certain lack of awareness even with consumers that have the best of intentions, and due to companies that intentionally deceive.
Look at the triangular logo that has rotating arrows, with a similar appearance of what been told is ‘recyclable’.
Then look further into the number in the centre, and the type of plastic.
1 & 2 are PET/PETE or HDPE.. basically polyethylene that can be recycled.
3 is PVC, like a lot of microwavable tray stuff, and is not recyclable.
4/5/6/7 are a bit murky, mostly not to put in domestic bin, but some stores will take it, since some of those used are stuff like LDPE (low density polyethylene) , like the plastic wrap on a tray of shrooms or tomatoes.
7 is one that is basically a ‘erm… doesn’t fit into those other classes.’
It really should not need a science degree, to decipher those basics, or know that things like ‘the green dot’ is simply a scam.
@ben wu: We need to put the costs onto the producer, not the consumer who has no choice in the packaging the producer supplies their products in.
We need to move away from plastics packaging entirely, and encourage the producer to find alternatives.
To do that, the producer must be made to bear the cost.
Having the consumer bear the cost achieves nothing. The producer will happily continue to use plastics. And the consumer will have no choice in this. And the consumer will bear the costs of “recycling” – the cleaning, the storage, the sorting, the return…
And this new deposit scheme, which is also a cost to the consumer, no matter how this is marketed.
They must be remanufactoring all the missing lap tops from large Dublin hospital. A staggering number. That the hse couldn’t find, just before the big hacking. Another waste of taxpayers’ money.
@Colette Byrne: Doesn’t this ‘save’ money tho?
So you replace workers by lesser quality version but cheaper, let’s do the same with our infrastructure… I wonder how much money these politicians will make with their friends on that one
@Dominic Leleu: What infrastructure, we’ve already been doing nothing, for generations.
Will these laptops run Windows 11 or 12? If not then will the government move to Linux? Have they thought this through?
@John Hagin Meade: Will application software designed specifically for the government and its various institutions run on Linux?
(Of course, all app specific software should be run via a Web browser interface, making them OS agnostic, but that is a topic for another day.)
It would be great to see all state computers on Linux. The advantages would be numerous, but I wonder how many IT ‘professionals’ in this country would be capable of supporting a Linux platform.
Our Universities have been particularly lax in their IT courses when it comes to Windows vs Linux, with little training if any on the latter.
have your say