Minister orders council to zone more land for housing
JUNIOR Housing Minister Damien English has ordered a local authority to zone more land for building homes to help alleviate the country’s housing crisis.
He took the rare step of issuing a ministerial direction to Kildare County Council ordering it to zone more land for housing in the town of Leixlip – the Irish base of chip giant Intel.
He said the council had zoned land for just 1,400 homes – less than half the target in the Kildare County Development Plan.
Mr English accused the county council of breaching the Planning and Development Act and ignoring a previous plea he made to zone additional lands for housing in Leixlip – prompting him to now use powers under Section 31 of the Planning and Development Act.
He directed the local authority to revise its Leixlip Local Area Plan as currently it has zoned land for only an additional 1,400 homes to 2023.
The minister said this was “a significant shortfall” on the 3,300 target as required by the core strategy of the Kildare County Development Plan.
He pointed out the removal by the council of “significant” land parcels at Celbridge Road East and Confey from the zoned housing lands in the local area plan “resulted in a substantial reduction in the overall potential housing development in Leixlip” and reduced the area of housing lands to less than 40 hectares.
In doing so, he said the council had gone against the advice of its own chief executive and himself by not zoning these two parcels of land for housing. “The Planning Authority therefore has failed to provide zoned residential lands in the Leixlip Local Area Plan 2017-23 sufficient to meet the housing allocation requirement in the core strategy of the Kildare County Development 201723,” said Mr English (pictured inset).
As a result, he said the local area plan was not in compliance with Development Plan guidelines.
The minister has given the council a six-month deadline to come up with a fresh local area plan that meets the objective of zoning land for 3,315 new housing units as laid out in the Kildare Development Plan.