Eimer McAuley

LIBERTIES LOCALS ARE to appeal Dublin City Council’s decision to grant permission for the development of a six-storey ‘aparthotel’ at 144 Thomas Street in the capital, as they say the area needs more social housing and play spaces for children, not more tourist accommodation.

At a protest on Thursday members of the Bridgefoot Street Residents Association and locals living in nearby Robert Emmet Close briefly blocked traffic at the front of the site, which is currently operating as a car park.

“Dereliction, empty shells, we don’t want your hotels!”, kids, families and older members of the community chanted.

Rita Fagan, who attended the protest, said that locals are coming together to fight plans for the new aparthotel because “the Liberties has been taken over”.

“There were others we weren’t able to stop, on Cork Street, on Ardee Street, but this is something tangible that we can challenge – this area does not need another hotel,” she said.

Pauleen McAdam, who runs a local youth group attended by over 50 children, said that she has serious concerns about how the residential street to the rear of the site will be used during the construction phase and in the daily running of a hotel.

“Will it become a through road for deliveries and bin lorries? There’s an area of land back there and that’s where the kids play football, they can’t go to the park because of anti-social activities happening there, so where they do play, they won’t be able to anymore.

“We don’t need another hotel in this area, we need more homes, and we need more safe play spaces for young people,” she insisted.

Amanda Doyle from Robert Emmet Close attended the protest with her seven-year-old daughter.

She has been on the social housing waitlist since her daughter was born. At present, she has to share a bed with her daughter.

“I know people are on the list for years, and I’m still number eighty-something, I haven’t got a hope. But how it is at the moment, my daughter doesn’t have any space for herself. The lack of social housing is turning people against each other.”

“We need housing on sites like this one, not hotels,” she said.

Local residents in the Liberties are objecting to a new aparthotel that’s been proposed for 144 Thomas Street - they say the area needs green spaces and housing, not more tourist accommodation pic.twitter.com/PeFpTS0ocu

— Eimer McAuley (@eimer_mcauley) May 28, 2026

Tracey Sands is a local who works as a tour guide. She says that local opposition to the aparthotel is not about being anti-tourist.

“Our houses are going to be overlooked. The kids are not going to have anywhere to play. I’m a tour guide and I love tourists, but we don’t want them in our front yard. All these buildings around here are historical, and they have to be fixed in a way that matches the local area. I’m fighting for the Liberties to stay the Liberties,” she said.

Local housing activists who are currently occupying a pub on nearby Chambers Street, which is owned by the Teeling Whiskey distillery, also spoke at the protest.

Novelist Naoise Dolan, who has been involved in the clean-up of the disused pub – which the activists have christened the Anne Devlin Community Centre – said that the occupation and the fight against this new aparthotel are part of a movement to “take back” the Liberties.

“I believe really strongly that people in the Liberties should have a say in what is done to the area. All these decisions are being made that are turning the area into a playground for tourists, and the people who have made the community this celebrated cultural hub that people want to go and visit are being driven out,” she said.

Sinn Féin TD Máire Devine said that she will be appealing the council’s decision to grant permission for the aparthotel alongside local groups.

In her previous objection to the development, she said that the council needed to be cognisant of the “oversaturation of hotels/aparthotels/co-living and student accommodation in the Liberties”.

Dublin City Council has granted developers Welthomas Property Ltd permission to build the 80-bedroom aparthotel providing that certain conditions are met, including that units should only be occupied for “short-term letting periods of no more than two months”.