A new development plan and funding are good news for Clongriffin and Belmayne, councillors and community activists say

The sun beats down on the newly tarmacked Main Street outside the Belmayne Community Hub.

A child runs inside to grab her purple and white scooter, and cheerfully waves to staff as she glides out of sight.

Across the road is the entrance to the “L-shape site”, a huge tract of vacant land that has now been earmarked for major development. Money has been allocated, too.

It has been a really long time coming, said Michelle McGoldrick, chairperson of the volunteer-run Belmayne Community Group, on Wednesday.

There are thousands of people in the area, but the developers built no community amenities, she says.

According to a new report from Dublin City Council, delivered to the North Central Area Committee meeting on Monday, that could change in the coming years.

McGoldrick, who has been pushing for this news since 2012, she says, is optimistic. “We've gotten broken promises before from Dublin City Council, but this all feels different. We’ve never had this commitment before,” she says.

The 39-page strategy, titled “Review of Current Development Clongriffin and Belmayne and a Strategy for Dublin City Council Owned Land at Belmayne”, details the challenges of the area’s piecemeal growth since the early 2000s.

It also sets out a roadmap to add social, cultural, and recreational infrastructure to the area to complement the housing there – allocating €13 million in capital funding towards the effort.

“We've never had that much capital funding on the table,” says McGoldrick.

Neighbourhood, interrupted

The council’s report envisions adding community infrastructure – as well as homes – on the L-shape site. 

The site spans 11.5 ha. Of this, 9.7 ha are owned by the council. The rest is owned,  the council report says, by Robert Stanley. 

Robert Stanley is a member of the family behind Belmayne developer Shannon Homes, a brother of Cairn Homes CEO Michael Stanley.

The original planning permission for the whole of Belmayne, approved in 2003 was for 2,180 homes.

It included a town square as well as buildings for childcare facilities, a post office, health centre, community centre, as well as pubs, restaurants, cafes and shops.

But before all that was built, the crash came, and the property market imploded. 

The history of Clongriffin and Belmayne should stand as an example of what not to do, says Social Democrats Councillor Paddy Monahan.

By now, the main street is built, with funding from the Department of Housing via its Local Infrastructure Housing Activation Fund (LIHAF) scheme, according to the new strategy. 

And hundreds more homes are being built in the area – including about 1,000 under construction now in Belmayne, and another 1,000 recently completed or under construction in the wider area, the report says.

Among these are homes planned by the Land Development Agency, which has recently bought a site in neighbouring Clongriffin, and another across the railway lines from that one, in Fingal, the report says.

Still, this large, L-shaped site in the centre of Belmayne sits vacant.

Changing tenure mix

As of the 2022 census, 40 percent of homes in the area were owner-occupied, the council report says.

Another 36 percent were private rentals, and 17 percent were social housing rented from the council or an approved housing body (AHB), it says.

However, that mix is changing fast, the report says. 

Planning permissions in the wider area show a large number of apartment schemes planned that are to be delivered for Approved Housing Bodies (AHBs), it says – mostly social homes, with some cost-rental.

“When these figures are added to the existing known figures the results show that 55% of all housing in the area will be social housing rental [from the council or AHBs] based on current known sites that are being delivered,” it says.

Fianna Fáil Councillor Deirdre Heney said that she has concerns about this tenure mix at the North Central Area Committee meeting on Monday.

“I think it's seriously imbalanced, and I would like any opportunity that is available to move that towards a more balanced tenure mix,” she said. 

“Experience shows us that a better tenure mix is much more sustainable than the situation at present in this particular locality,” she says.

“I feel it should be an equal amount of affordable purchase, which is private housing,” Heney said, by phone on Wednesday.

“Because you own your own home. Albeit, if you want to sell it, you have to pay a clawback, but it still enables people who can't afford to buy a house on the open market, to buy their own home,” she says.

Although, not everyone agrees with “the idea that large social neighbourhoods are doomed to dystopia – characterised by unemployment, crime and drugs”, which, according to a 2017 op-ed by a trio of Irish housing experts, “is so widespread and so widely supported that it is rarely challenged in media, political, or policy debates.”

There are two major problems with this idea though, the trio wrote. “First of all, it’s wrong. And second of all, it is a dangerous narrative for a city like Dublin, which desperately needs ambitious, large-scale social-housing construction,” they wrote.

Nevertheless, the council strategy presented to the area committee this week includes an immediate, short-term focus to “seek to expand the tenure diversity with an emphasis on affordability”, and “deliver more home ownership options and expanded tenure options on the public lands”. 

If a lot of the housing is provided through AHBs that also creates funding challenges for the council – reducing the financial resources available for schools, parks, and libraries, the report says.

Private developers pay a “development levy” when they build new homes, and this money can be used to build community infrastructure. But AHBs don’t.

“At a time when the Council needs to be building additional community facilities, it faces a multimillion euro deficit from the development contribution scheme due to the high number of AHB developments which do not pay development levies,” it says.  

A young, diverse, and underserved community

With all this housing built and so much more on the way, the area still lacks a lot of the other stuff a community needs.

The 2022 census paints a picture of the population in the Belmayne-Clongriffin area. It is multicultural, with 40 percent of residents born outside of Ireland. And it is a young area.

Of the 13,600 residents, 81 percent are under the age of 44. Nearly one in three are children and teenagers, the council report says. 

“This young population will continue to drive demand for crèche / childcare and education services and associated youth facilities,” the report says.

However, there were no dedicated centres for youth services, mental health, addiction support, or family outreach, according to a 2023 Northside Partnership Community Assessment cited in the council report. 

There are no public indoor sports facilities, and outdoor pitch access is limited, the community assessment says.

The Northside Partnership study says the Trinity Sports and Leisure Centre in Donaghmede was built before Belmayne and Clongriffin, and it lacks the capacity to service the entire area.

Community spaces in the area are limited to two temporarily repurposed retail units – The Hub in Belmayne and The Junction in Clongriffin, it says.

McGoldrick said The Hub, provided by housing charity Clúid, is “really small”.

From there, a volunteer-led youth club has operated for over two years, working with more than 100 young people, she says. 

“We have the Belmayne-Clongriffin Network now, that's a range of organisations starting to do outreach services from the room that we have access to,” she says.

Foróige, a youth organisation, have recently started running a youth café in the community room five nights a week, which McGoldrick says frees the Belmayne Community Group up to work on bringing other services into the area.  

The Dales, an addiction service, and Doras Buí, a lone parent support group, recently began running services out of the Hub, she says, and the YMCA hopes to expand their work to the area soon.  

However, Foróige are at capacity and are turning kids away, which goes to show the desperate need for more community space, McGoldrick says.

Having to turn youngsters away due to lack of space is frustrating because there’s nowhere else for them to go, said Geraldine Keenan, a youth worker with Foróige, in the Belmayne Hub on Wednesday.

Keenan says a bigger facility will provide a safe place for the young people in the community, and others.

“The old folks, parenting groups, family support groups, there's a lot of services needed,” she says. “And unfortunately, this is the room that we're working out of. We're working on limited time slots too.”

McGoldrick says the only full-time service in the area is the Kilmore West Youth Project, a youth diversion group. However, she says the aim of the Belmayne Community Group is to reach young people before they get to that stage.

Council strategy for community infrastructure

The new report proposes a series of interventions to meet the area’s growing needs.

In the short-term – the next year or two – the council plans to ask councillors for permission to sell lands at Belmayne town centre, and approach central government sources, to raise funding to build two “flagship” projects, the report says.  

Those are a “new library, cultural centre and community hub” at the Malahide Road junction, forming a civic anchor for the new town square.

This will take some time to actually build, so in the meantime, the plan includes providing an “Outreach Library Service” to the area, and looking at leasing or buying a space for a new short-term library and new community spaces within the area. 

The second planned flagship project is “a quality indoor sports facility”, with astro-pitches, along the newly completed Main Street.  

“Considering the levels of population growth, there is a clear need for a purpose-built facility to serve the community and to offer a wide range of activities and rooms for a range of sporting and leisure purposes,” the report says. “This could be supported by additional outdoor facilities such as astro pitches etc.”

The plan also calls for the relocation of the Belmayne allotments, which are currently on land zoned for housing – perhaps to a new permanent site near Grange Community College.

As well as partnerships with Fingal County Council to develop additional playing fields on green belt lands and ensure services cross administrative borders.

The report says there is already an “active proposal” to sell council land at Belcamp Lane, facing onto Malahide Road, for use as an HSE primary care centre and a Garda Station.

The council “intends to continue to work with the HSE and OPW [Office of Public Works] to bring forward both projects”, the report says. 

Reactions

Local Fine Gael Councillor Supriya Singh said by email on Wednesday that she thought the new strategy seems positive.

It has ambitious yet realistic short-term and long-term actions, she said. She’s confident that it can be achieved over the next five years, once a team to do it has been set up, Singh said.

“The plan also proposes a governance structure and reporting regime which provide for ongoing monitoring and oversight by the elected members,” she said.

But Monahan, the Social Democrats councillor, was more cautious. It’s an “aspirational plan”, Monahan said by phone on Tuesday. The council is doing its best, but it has been forced to work with a flawed, developer-led process.

The council’s report acknowledges that implementing the strategy will be complex. 

It envisions setting up a “cross-departmental” implementation team, supported by external partners like the Land Development Agency (LDA) and Fingal County Council. 

The report also recommends regular engagement with elected representatives and community stakeholders to ensure buy-in and responsiveness to emerging needs.

The council “has allocated €13 million to Belmayne /Clongriffin to implement recommendations/actions in this plan”, the report says. “Additional funding will be required to deliver all recommendations/ actions included in the plan.” 

For Michelle McGoldrick, of the Belmayne Community Group, there is a huge satisfaction in getting this far, she says.

“I'm glad that everybody could put their political differences aside and work with the community group on this,” McGoldrick says. 

“We have the support of every single elected representative in the area on this as well, which I think has helped to get it to the stage that we’re at today,” she says.

Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme.