Many questions, few answers about council's plan to leave Wood Quay and build new HQ

As Dublin City Council executives power ahead with a deal likely to cost hundreds of millions of euro to move its headquarters from Wood Quay to Kevin Street, councillors didn’t have any substantive discussion of the project at their monthly meeting on Monday.

Sinn Féin councillors submitted an emergency motion to talk about the issue at the meeting, said one of them, Micheál Mac Donncha, on Tuesday. 

But the Lord Mayor, Fine Gael Councillor Ray McAdam did not include it on the (already very full) agenda at the January monthly meeting on Monday at City Hall. 

Then, when Mac Donncha tried to raise the issue at the very end of the meeting, McAdam told him, “You’ve got 10 seconds.”

At a meeting of the council’s South East Area Committee earlier on Monday, Labour Councillor Dermot Lacey had tabled a motion asking for a presentation on the plan. 

In response, he got a report of about two-thirds of a page, which said council executives would brief “group leaders” – leaders of the parties and two groups of independents on the council – “next Monday afternoon, and all Councillors in early February”.

Council executives are looking to buy the stalled Camden Yards project on Kevin Street, build new offices for the council there, and move its headquarters there from their current Civic Offices on Wood Quay, the report says. 

The project would also involve the construction of “up to 300 homes” on the Camden Yard site, and “in excess of 500 homes” on the vacated Wood Quay site, the report says. “While providing modern, sustainable workplaces for staff and improved public services for citizens,” and reducing carbon emissions, it says.

Several councillors have said they support the idea of the council buying the stalled Camden Yard project, but see significant challenges in trying to redevelop the site of the council’s current Civic Offices on Wood Quay, given the Viking site that lies beneath it.

And, they’ve said, they generally think that – as they are tasked with oversight of what the council executives, managers and staff do – they should have more information about the proposed land acquisition, office construction, organisational relocation, building demolition, and housing development.

In the 10 seconds or so that he was allotted at Monday’s January monthly meeting, Mac Donncha quickly asked for the “projected environmental and financial costs” of demolishing the Civic Offices on Wood Quay, as well “which, if any, of our in-house DCC professional experts were consulted about this”. 

McAdam cut him off – as he had done many other councillors that evening, as part of the chair’s job to keep the meeting moving and end it on time – and concluded the meeting. 

Questions

Back in May 2025, councillors including the Green Party’s Claire Byrne, Fine Gael’s Danny Byrne, and independent Mannix Flynn were advocating for the council to buy the Camden Yard site, and build housing on it. 

At the time, a spokesperson for the council said that it had no plans to buy the site. “Given the extent of the commercial office space within this development, i.e. 407,000 sq. feet, Dublin City Council do not intend to acquire this site,” they said.

So what changed since then, to change the council's mind? asked Fianna Fáil Councillor Rory Hogan at Monday’s South East Area Committee meeting. 

He got no answer at the meeting. 

At the same meeting, Hogan also asked, “if you’re spending, like you know, ballpark €100 million on buying this site at Camden Yard, another €300 million to do it up, and then are we going to spend another €300 million on doing up the Civic Offices site in Wood Quay, that’s going to be nearly, closer to a billion quid there, would it not be smarter to stay in the Civic Offices in Wood Quay, is it the most efficient use of our money?”

Flynn, the independent councillor, said on Tuesday that the council is getting the Camden Yard site for about €80 million. A council spokesperson, however, said that “The Council has not confirmed any purchase price, and we would not comment on speculation regarding figures or the status of any commercial discussions.”

“Dublin City Council can confirm that Heads of Agreement were signed in December to facilitate a 10‑week due diligence period in relation to the potential acquisition of the Camden Yard site. That due diligence work is ongoing,” the spokesperson said.

Meanwhile, neither an email to councillors on 19 December on Shakespeare’s behalf, nor his written response at Monday’s monthly meeting to a query about the project from Flynn, nor the response to Lacey’s motion at Monday’s South East Area Committee meeting mention the costs of developing the Camden Yard site, or of redeveloping the Wood Quay site.

However, it may be that council executives are thinking that the cost of the development of any housing on those two sites would fall to the Land Development Agency (LDA). An LDA spokesperson said Tuesday that it had no comment on whether it was interested in building housing on the Camden Yard site, or the Wood Quay site.

It’s also unclear how much of the Wood Quay site would be available for redevelopment. 

The National Inventory of Architectural Heritage lists the Civic Offices as of “regional” architectural significance. This “constitutes a ministerial recommendation for its inclusion on Dublin City Council’s Record of Protected Structures”, says a 2020 conservation report. Although they’re not listed (yet).

And, underneath the site there are the remains of a Viking site that tens of thousands of Dubliners fought (and lost) a battle to try to preserve, and then the council built the Civic Offices on top of.

“The idea that they’re smoothly going to go from demolition to building 500 homes on that site is cloud cuckoo land,” said Mac Donncha, the Sinn Féín councillor, by phone on Tuesday.

He called it “a hugely problematic site with all kinds of potential planning, architectural, engineering and archeological issues”.

On the other side of the equation, there is the potential cost of fixing up the current Civic Offices so that staff could stay there, rather than buying Camden Yard, building new offices there and moving to them.

There’s also a looming government target for all public buildings to achieve a minimum BER rating of B by 2030. 

On 17 December, an article in The Currency put the cost of refurbishment at "over €250 million". Two days later, in the email on Shakespeare's behalf, that cost had risen to "€350–€400 million".

Where did that latter number come from? Would the council share the studies it was based on?

“The €350–€400 million figure is a high-level estimate reflecting the potential scope of refurbishment works, including compliance upgrades, sustainability measures, and modernisation requirements,” a council spokesperson said in late December. 

“We do not share internal reports or working documents outside the statutory process. Any supporting material will be published as part of the formal governance and decision-making process,” they said.

Support

The project would be a “win-win-win” said Lacey, the Labour councillor, at Monday’s meeting of the South East Area Committee.

“I think it’s a good development for Dublin,” Lacey said. “We should question it, and we should engage in lots of discussions, but so far from my perch, I like it.”

Flynn, the independent councillor, also said he supported the project. 

“It is wise, I think, for us to be able to support this,” he said at the same meeting. “Now, it may not come to fruition, because there is a lot of detail in relation to how we’re going to get these particular monies …”

On the phone the same day, he said the redevelopment of Wood Quay would also provide the opportunity of better displaying the Viking site. “It could be brought back out and presented to the public,” he said.

Lacey said that when council managers do brief councillors more comprehensively on the plan, he thinks that should be done “in a sort of workshop forum”, rather than in a public meeting, “where there’s sort of a different tone to debates”.

A lot of unanswered questions remain, said Independents 4 Change Councillor Pat Dunne, at the meeting. 

“There’s a huge amount of questions, we should have a broad outline of what’s being proposed here and we don’t,” he said. 

Before councillors at the meeting moved on to the next item on the agenda, Hogan, the Fianna Fáil councillor, jumped in again to ask for more information about the Camden Yard/Wood Quay project.

“I just have one additional question, if we know at this point, how are we going to pay for it?” he asked. 

He did not get an answer at the meeting. 

Dunne, the Independents 4 Change councillor, said that, “Hopefully, tonight’s meeting, we might have a little bit more clarity on this.”

That same evening was the monthly meeting of the full council, when Sinn Féin’s Mac Donncha got 10 seconds to ask questions, and got no answers.