Consolidating operations into one main hub would be the dream, says Amy Carey, CEO of Solas Project, but they don't yet know what doing up the vacant building on Cork Street would cost.
As it stands, the HSE-owned James Weir Home for Nurses building, on Cork Street, looks set to go on sale on the open market.
But members of Dublin City Council’s South Central Area Committee said Wednesday that they want the council to buy it instead, and pass it on.
It should go to the Solas Project, a charity that operates youth services across seven locations scattered around the Liberties, some councillors told Wednesday’s committee meeting.
At that meeting, Sinn Féin Councillor Ciarán Ó Meachair brought an emergency motion calling for urgent intervention from the council to stop any private sale.
The motion said the HSE had offered to sign the Edwardian building, now a protected structure, over to the council for no charge.
The council hasn’t yet responded to a question asked on Thursday as to whether this was the case or not.
But in other similar instances, such as the Rupert Guinness Theatre just the other side of the Liberties, officials have edged away from taking on old handed-off buildings that need a lot of work – and so a big spend.
The council has struggled too, to bring vacant or derelict buildings it has bought, back into use as homes.
Still, “we meet with the local community all the time about the lack of community spaces, about the lack of community facilities in Dublin 8”, said Ó Meachair at the meeting.
Donal Corrigan
“Here is a prime piece of land in the heart of Dublin 8, on Cork Street, that's laying idle,” he said.
As Cork Street is already bulging with hotels and student accommodation, he said, this building should instead serve the local community.
Indeed, said Fianna Fáil Councillor Ammar Ali. “We need to take action.”
To miss the opportunity to keep it the hands of the community is “the worst thing we can do for the next generation of the people, or this generation of the people of Dublin 8”, he said.
Currently, the HSE manages the red-brick Weir Home building, on Cork Street between Marrowbone Lane and Urban Plant Life.
Dating back to 1903, it was once a place to live for nurses working in Cork Street Fever Hospital across the road, the complex now known as Brú Chaoimhín, still used by the HSE as a community health centre.
In October 2022, the plan was for the HSE to transfer the building and adjoining burial ground to the Peter McVerry Trust.
The Religious Society of Friends (the Quakers) hold title to the burial ground, but it is under the control of the HSE, the council said.
The Trust would then redevelop the Weir Home as social housing and transfer the burial ground to Dublin City Council, the plan went.
However, following a well-publicised financial scandal, the Peter McVerry Trust withdrew from the project.
The HSE offered the building to other state agencies, like the Land Development Agency (LDA) and Dublin City Council. But none of them wanted it, Minister of State at the Department of Health Kieran O'Donnell TD, of Fine Gael, told Social Democrats TD Jen Cummins in the Dáil on Tuesday.
"The HSE will now progress to disposal of this property on the open market," O'Donnell said.
Dublin City Council had looked at using the building to deliver social housing, Bernard Kelly, executive manager for the South Central Area, said at Wednesday’s meeting.
“But as a protected structure, only minimal structural intervention would be allowable, making it non-viable as a housing development,” Kelly said.
Equally, to be considered for other usage, like a community facility, would require the building to meet standards in terms of accessibility and energy efficiency, without significantly altering its spatial layout, he said.
Given it is on the record of protected structures, this would require “specialist-led conservation works” and a lot of investment from the council that it simply hasn’t budgeted for, he said.
Also, said senior executive officer, Bevin Herbert, a community facility should, by its nature, be accessible to all. “I'm not sure if that building would be able to meet that requirement in terms of accessibility,” she said.
Ó Meachair, who tabled the motion, later replied that “it might not be the most accessible building, but as it stands, it's not accessible to anyone”.
The former James Weir Home for Nurses should go to the Solas Project, said Labour Councillor Darragh Moriarty, at Wednesday's meeting.
“I don't know if anybody knows at the moment in terms of a detailed feasibility study as to how much it would cost to get this up to standard to be public-facing for a youth service,” he said.
He suggested that the council acquire it from the HSE with a view to transferring it, in its current state, to the Solas Project. “Subject to them having the funding to do some renovations on it.”
The council would essentially be a conduit, Moriarty said.
To consolidate its operations into one main hub would be the dream, says Amy Carey, CEO of Solas Project.
“We don't have a clear sense of cost involved, so we would need to get in and get it assessed,” she said by phone on Thursday.
Private donors are on hand to help fund Solas Project in finding a new, centralised home, she said. “We just don’t have a full sense of what the scope of the work is.”
Currently, the youth organisation is housed across seven different, privately rented premises, she said. “It's a real hodgepodge.”
“There's no long-term security with it, and also just the cost and maintenance of several different buildings,” she said.
The logistics of people moving across different premises makes things that bit more difficult to manage too, she said.
Solas Project has been working hard for the last few years to establish a permanent, integrated youth space for the area, she said. “We're constantly on the lookout.”
But the great challenge in Dublin 8, she said, is the lack of space available.
“In and around 1,000 square meters would be what we're hoping,” she said. “So to get something of that size in this area is very difficult.”
The ideal scenario would be to build a new premises on an empty site, she said. “But given that we're restricted by geography, that’s not an option at the moment.”
She has spoken with the LDA, Diageo, Ballymore and others about finding a place, but nobody has anything in the size Solas Project need, she said.
Social Democrats Councillor Lesley Byrne, who also works as a teacher, said she would love for the site to go to the Solas Project.
“I've known them very well, even prior to being a councillor, from the work they do in the area with young people from my own school, and they absolutely desperately need their own space,” she said.
Both Byrne and Moriarty raised concerns that if the council does take the site in charge for community use, and funds the necessary work itself, that it could mean deprioritising other projects.
“I do think needs to be put in the context of our current capital programme,” said Moriarty, of the Labour Party.
The programme already includes things like a multi-use pitch at Marrowbone Lane, stabilisation works on the still vacant and decaying Iveagh Market, refurbishing the long-vacant old Inchicore library building, and a technical assessment of what to do with Kilmainham Mill, he noted.
Ironically, said independent Councillor Vincent Jackson on Wednesday, having this building listed could actually, ultimately result in its destruction.
“Because if it's prohibitive for anyone to do anything with it, it would just languish there until the roof caves in and everything else,” he said. “Somebody, unfortunately, will probably put a match to it some night."
Jackson worries that the site would then be levelled and replaced by a modern block of apartments.
Byrne, the Social Democrats councillor, asked at the meeting whether de-listing the property as a protected structure could be considered.
“I don't think it's ever been considered, but it's already on the national register of buildings,” replied Kelly, the executive manager. “There would be a process there that I'm not aware of.”
Ó Meachair, the Sinn Féin councillor, pointed to the recent report, A socioeconomic analysis of Dublin’s South West Inner City, from Barra Roantree, Assistant Professor & Programme Director of MSc in Economic Policy in Trinity College.
Roantree recommended that “the concentration of disadvantage highlighted in this report provides a compelling case for additional targeted investment in the SWIC”.
Said Ó Meachair, the James Weir Home is a perfect opportunity to do just that. “It’s sitting there waiting for us.”
“I think there's a path for DCC to acquire the building free of charge,” he said.
“Community groups are willing to fundraise and put money into the building. DCC basically only has to act as an intermediary,” he said.
There may not be much cost for Dublin City Council in the whole equation, he said.
“I think we do need to act quickly because, as it stands, the building could be sold off, and Cork Street could have yet another hotel or student accommodation block,” he said.
The committee backed Ó Meachair's motion to writing to Anthony Flynn, the assistant chief executive of the council’s Planning, Property and Economic Development section, “to seek their support for ownership of the building to be transferred to Dublin City Council”.
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