Work stopped on 698 student apartments
A SENIOR Irish Water manager has temporarily succeeded in blocking a developer from clearing a site earmarked for a massive €160m student accommodation complex.
The State agency’s marketing manager Wendy Jennings is involved in a protracted legal battle over the building of 698 student apartments close to her home on Dublin’s south side.
Last week the High Court ruled if she lodged an appeal by next week (within 10 days), limited clearance works could not be done on the site until the courts heard the appeal. The latest turn in the long-running legal battle comes as staff and students prepare to stage a ‘reciprocate the love’ protest tomorrow on St Valentine’s Day over what they describe as ‘sky high rents’ being charged by college authorities for on-campus accommodation.
Ms Jennings is seeking to overturn a decision by An Bord Pleanála allowing the construction of the apartments on a site 850 metres from the UCD campus.
She is one of two residents living in the upmarket The Grove estate – where homes regularly sell for €700,000 – taking a judicial review case against the development.
At the centre of the High
Court case being taken by Ms Jennings and her entrepreneur neighbour Adrian O’Connor, is whether removing trees to build the complex is against the local council’s development plan.
Although the residents insist they are not opposed to a development on the former Our
Lady’s Grove school site, they claim it is a ‘significant overdevelopment’. Ms Jennings and Mr O’Connor have raised concerns about whether the national planning authority may have breached EU habitat protection regulations by failing ‘to apply the correct legal test’ when assessing the impact on the local bat population. The developer involved is a company called
Colbeam. Instead of seeking planning permission from the local council in Dún LaoghaireRathdown, they applied directly to An Bord Pleanála on the basis that it qualified as Strategic Housing and, as a result, their proposal should be put on the planning application fast-track.
The local authority was consulted about the development, but during a previous High Court hearing Ms Jennings’ legal team said the council recommended planning permission be refused.
The court also heard any delay in building the complex beyond 2024 could cost the developers €10.5m.