In Donnybrook, developer lodges new plans for housing on site of former Magdalene Laundry

Save for the odd bit of traffic that whipped along the Donnybrook Road, the leafy suburban village was sleepy on Sunday afternoon.

On the grounds of St Margarets, a local nursing home run by the Sisters of Charity, a couple of elderly women were visiting the grave of Sister Stanislaus Kennedy, whose funeral mass had occurred on Friday.

Nearby, a couple of grey squirrels and a magpie ran around an automated lawnmower as it levelled the home’s lawn.

Scrutinising the scene from on high were half a dozen or so pigeons, all perched atop a towering, grey chimney that hangs over the grounds, and belongs to the now overgrown and crumbling former Magdalene laundry.

Part of the laundry, a two-storey building with bars over its windows and weeds growing from the roof, sits at the very edge of St Margarets.

Although access to the institution is closed off, with the gates at the entrance – which is nearby, down a curving lane known as The Crescent – sealed by lock and chain.

Attached to the walls and near the gate were a few paper notices, soggy from the rain, announcing that developer Pembroke Partnership Limited is seeking Dublin City Council’s permission to build 38 homes on the site.

As part of these works, the developer would be retaining its protected structures, with the application proposing the two-storey laundry be refurbished for four apartments, the application says.

But, said independent Councillor Mannix Flynn, speaking on Friday, it isn’t clear if the planned preservation works are appropriate or sensitive to its history as an institution for single mothers. 

“The laundry was synonymous with slave labour, incarceration and abuse,” Flynn says.

These buildings are sites of trauma, says Flynn, a survivor of the industrial school system. “We need to be sensitive of this particular legacy.”

Earlier this year, the Office of Public Works was granted permission to turn the former laundry on Sean McDermott Street into a remembrance centre. But local councillors raised their concerns that survivors of abuse in church-run institutions were being excluded from its key planning and governance structures.

These institutions need to be handled in a very mindful way, says Flynn, the independent councillor. “The council’s naming and commemorations committee is trying to develop a policy around how we acknowledge these sites.”

Housing is welcomed here, he says. “But it needs to be appropriate development.”

A spokesperson for the developer did not respond when asked on Tuesday to clarify how or whether they would acknowledge the legacy of the Magdalene laundry on the site.

“An exciting and rare opportunity”

In December 2015, the former Magdalene laundry was put up for sale, with real estate agency Colliers listing it as “an exciting and rare opportunity to develop in the heart of Donnybrook”.

The listing omitted its history, only saying that the chimney was a listed structure by Dublin City Council.

Four months later, in March 2016, Flynn launched an online petition, which said the state should intervene in the sale, and preserve the building and its contents, which included woven baskets, religious iconography, wash basins, ledgers and machinery.

That April, investment firm MontLake sought the council’s permission to demolish the whole laundry, with the exception of the chimney, and build 25 apartments. But the firm later withdrew the application.

On 29 January 2020, An Bord Pleanála gave permission to Pembroke Partnership Limited to demolish everything on site except for the chimney and two-storey laundry building, and construct 44 apartments.

But, due to the historic and social significance of the laundry, the board listed among its conditions that a conservation expert would need to be employed during construction, materials from the 19th-century building be reused, and the developer should facilitate the preservation, recording and protection of archaeological materials within the site.

Pembroke Partnership Limited is a company located in Gibraltar, according to its planning application, which was prepared by the planning consultants Tom Philips and Associates.

And the company lodged a new application on 17 October for the construction of 38 homes – a mix of duplexes, houses, and apartments, including four in the existing laundry building, which would be refurbished.

According to the application, the developer has also proposed private, communal and public open space and EV charging.

The application also included a letter confirming an agreement in principle to comply with the council’s “Part V” requirements, meaning the council can buy 10 percent of the development to use as social housing.

According to a conservation report, prepared by MESH Architects, despite its vacancy and lack of maintenance, its earlier buildings are in relatively good condition, with the chimney stack structurally sound.

The report says the laundry was built on the site of Donnybrook Castle in the 1830s, with the listed two-storey building dating to the 1870s.

Its role as a Magdalene laundry was acknowledged in the MESH report, which also said that the firm is of the opinion that the proposed development “strikes an appropriate balance between the retention and re-use of significant architectural heritage”.

A spokesperson for the consulting firm did not comment when asked on Tuesday to outline how or whether the new development would acknowledge the site’s history.

To date, the only observation was submitted by locals Brendan Tangney and Trish Murphy, saying they welcomed the redevelopment of the site, but that, in recent years, the council has permitted too many developments to proceed on “an ad-hoc, development by development, basis without having an overall coherent plan for the area”.

A spate of new developments in the area has radically changed the area already, says local Kevin Birrane. “Donnybrook hasn’t retained its village atmosphere. It’s now basically a run off the N11 into the city centre. The whole village centre is gone.”

Remembering the past

On Monday evening, Flynn, the independent councillor, tabled a motion at a meeting of the council’s South East Area Committee, asking the council’s planning and heritage departments to ensure that as much as possible of laundry’s heritage infrastructure is retained and worked into the new development.

Reiterating his 2016 petition, Flynn’s motion said that all contents associated with its history should be retained and preserved, noting that Aras an Uachtaráin was among those who utilised the laundry’s services.

Michelle Robinson, the council’s executive manager for the South East Area, gave a written reply to Flynn’s motion, acknowledging that the former Magdalene laundry is on the council’s list of protected structures.

But, as there is a current planning application on the site, the council’s conservation section could not give any further comment.

Speaking at the committee meeting on Monday, Flynn said there are protected structures on the site, which are listed because of their age, make-up and historic significance. But, “the overall site has to be remembered for what it was”.

Flynn knows many women who suffered greatly in the laundry, he said. “But, however, the nuns have separated themselves from that particular history, and indeed, many people have separated themselves from that particular history.”

So while the laundry, to some extent, is being retained, its history needs to be retained too, he said.

He welcomed the housing development, he said. “But not at the cost of actually erasing what is a very important history of the area, and indeed a very important history of our own subjugation.”

Labour Councillor Dermot Lacey said he understands a lot of heritage items have already been removed from the site.

It is also important to remember the women who were kept there, Lacey said, noting that he grew up next-door to the laundry. “I’m always deeply ashamed of the fact that as kids, we were slagging off the women. It wasn’t right.”

When it had originally gone up for sale back in 2015, Lacey wrote to the National Women’s Council of Ireland to suggest that they buy the site and use it as a national training centre, he said. “It had all the facilities to do so.”

Lacey never got a reply, he said. 

A spokesperson for the NCWI did not respond when asked on Tuesday about this proposal.

Flynn’s motion was agreed by the area committee.