Balbriggan residents are claiming that there are not adequate local services in place to accommodate a new €251.5 million 564-unit residential scheme.
Over 90 objections have been placed against the Large Scale Residential Development (LRD) scheme lodged with Fingal County Council by Dean Swift Property Holdings UC.
The firm is seeking a 10-year planning permission for 378 houses, 102 apartments and 84 duplex units on a site off Flemington Lane near Balbriggan in north Co Dublin.
However, local residents claim that the area already does not have sufficient numbers of school places, GPs and shops to cater for the existing population.
One local resident, Dr Meenakshi Nursing, has told the council that as a resident who only moved to the town in 2020 “I had to go as far as Drogheda to access a GP. None of the current GPs in Balbriggan are accepting new patients as they have reached capacity”.
Dr Nursing stated: "There is a serious need for extension of primary care infrastructure to accommodate for the current Balbriggan population, let alone a future influx of residents through the massive housing development.”
Dr Nursing said there were "barely enough supermarkets and essential shops to accommodate for the needs of current residents and consequently, current residents need to leave Balbriggan to access goods at a competitive price in neighbouring towns like Swords and Drogheda”.
Dr Nursing said all the concerns in the submission “result in Balbriggan residents seeking jobs, shopping, extracurricular activities, essential primary care services and entertainment outside of Balbriggan”.
A submission on behalf of Balbriggan Community Council outlines many similar concerns.
On behalf of the Community Council, Alice Davis said the Dean Swift LRD “will be damaging to the town, the sense of community and will just perpetuate the problems that are already present in the town”.
Ms Davis said “currently Balbriggan is very disjointed with no clear centre, vacant shops in the main street and a large proportion of the population are working, shopping and spending their leisure time outside of the town”.
On an objection lodged on behalf of housing estates/residential areas known as Flemington Park, The Hastings & Taylor Hill, Balbriggan, Co Dublin, Kevin Tolan of KT Designs Architectural & Planning Consultants told the council that “what is being proposed in this LRD is to put another 564 dwellings on an unserviced greenfield site on the periphery of a town that is deemed to require catch-up investment in infrastructure and employment under current planning policy”.
He said: “This proposal, simply put, is ‘compact sprawl’ as opposed to ‘compact growth’.”
Mr Tolan said “this proposal if permitted, will advocate for repeating the now recognized planning mistakes of the past i.e unsustainable urban sprawl”.
However, as part of a 127-page planning report lodged with the application, planning consultant Kevin Hughes of Hughes Planning and Development Consultants told the council the scheme “presents an appropriately scaled residential development on residentially zoned land”.
Mr Hughes said the application site “has the capacity to accommodate additional residential accommodation and respond to the current housing shortage apparent in the north Dublin area”.
A decision is due next month.
