Denis O’Brien firm gets green light for €50m D4 plan
AN Bord Pleanála has given the green light to a company backed by Irish businessman Denis O’Brien to construct a
€50m luxury apartment plan in Dublin’s Donnybrook.
The decision brings to an end a 19-month planning saga that has now resulted in Mr O’Brien’s Purleigh Holdings Ltd securing planning permission for the 86 apartments across five blocks.
The firm lodged plans for a
90-unit plan last December in a revised application with Dublin City Council. However, this was reduced to 86 by the council in its granting of permission last April which ordered the omission of a top floor in one apartment block.
Two Dublin 4 residents’ groups, the Greenfield Residents Group and the Nutley Square Management Co, appealed the City Council decision to the appeals board.
The board inspector recommended that the development be further reduced to 78 units, which if upheld, would have wiped an estimated €4m off the value of the development.
However, the board has not gone along with the inspectors’ recommendation and has granted planning for 86 apartments.
In their appeal, the Greenfield Residents Group declared “enough is enough”.
The group said it accepted a previous decision to grant planning permission for 71 units and this should have been the maximum allowed.
Their appeal stated that the 86 units “would be excessive” and a decision to give the green light for that amount of units “would be perverse”.
In their appeal, the residents of Nutley Square claimed that the plan is “overwhelming”, out of scale with houses in the area and would result in a significant loss of residential amenities.
However, the appeals board ruled that the proposal would not seriously injure the visual and residential amenities of the area and so it would accord with the zoning objective for the site.
The board also ruled that the proposal would, likewise, accord with relevant density, height, and residential development standards set out in the Development Plan.
Mr O’Brien acquired the site from UCD in 2008 when he gave UCD €15m in cash and another three-acre site at Roebuck to the college in a land-swap plus cash deal.
The consultants for Purleigh, Hughes Planning and Development Consultants, stated that the proposal “seeks to deliver a high quality residential development at a scale and density which makes the most efficient use of serviced land within Dublin’s metropolitan area” and that the apartments are generous in size.