Why are car parks, with planning for 1,500 homes, exempt from tax meant to accelerate building?

There are three car parks in Fingal with planning permission for 1,511 homes but little sign that those will be built anytime soon, said Green Party Councillor David Healy on Monday.

Two are outside the Blanchardstown Shopping Centre, and another is used by employees in Swift Square Office Park in Santry, he said.

They're being treated by the landowners as medium-term projects, he said to councillors at the monthly meeting of Fingal County Council. “I don’t think that’s acceptable at a time when we have a housing crisis.”

At that same time, the lands aren't subject to the Residential Zoned Land Tax, a levy brought in to nudge landowners to build out lands when they're suitable for housing – because they're used as car parks.

That should change, said Healy at Monday's monthly meeting of Fingal County Council.

He brought a motion, saying that the council should write to Minister for Housing James Browne, of Fianna Fáil, and ask him to amend legislation to remove this exemption.

It was vital that the council propose the change and sites are brought under the tax, Healy said, “and we would incentivise their development for housing”.

If the chamber passed the motion, the council would forward on the request to the minister, said Fingal’s Director of People, Corporate and Digital Services Mary Egan, in a written response.

Councillors backed it.

Car parks and greenbelts

Healy had already circled the issue of Residential Zoned Land Tax exemptions, back in January as Fingal County Council was preparing to rezone 61.5 hectares of land to make space for 2,500 homes.

It had knock-on impacts for the county's greenbelt, he said.

The council had audited how much land it had for homes already rezoned. But it had underestimated that, said Healy, in a written submission to Fingal County Council as part of its consultation for vary its 2023 to 2028 development plan, dated 28 January.

The audit had omitted three important sites with permission for housing, he wrote.

These included two car parks at Blanchardstown Shopping Centre, for which developer Blanch Retail Nominee Limited was given approval by An Bord Pleanála – as it was at the time – in May 2023 to build 971 homes, and in May 2024 to build 348.

The other, just off Northwood Avenue in Santry, has permission for 192 homes.

In March, the council agreed to rezone land across 11 sites, with the patches scattered in Clonsilla, Skerries, Lusk, Malahide and Clongriffin, as well as parts of the county’s greenbelt.

But it made no sense to be rezoning unsuitable greenbelt lands when Fingal has car parks zoned for housing, said Labour Councillor Brian McDonagh at Monday’s meeting.

Fine Gael Councillor Aoibhinn Tormey was more cautious. Healy hadn't specified where these car parks were located during Monday's meeting, she said.

She was worried that there might be unintended outcomes from his motion, she said. “I mean, people need cars. People need to be able to park their cars.”

But, ultimately she wasn’t going to support an issue where she was “totally uninformed”, she said.

Róisín Burke, Fingal’s director of planning and development, said the car parks are exempted because they are actively and lawfully used.

The Blanchardstown Shopping Centre car parks weren’t temporary either, she said. "When the shopping centre was developed, this was the car park associated with it. It remains having a mixed-use town centre zoning, and it’s exempt from RZLT as it is in a lawful use that has permission.”

Healy asked Burke to confirm that, given these sites were granted permission to be developed as housing, the relevant planning authorities deemed them appropriate to be converted into housing.

The land was zoned Major Town Centre, and a further application was submitted for residential use, she said.

“So the zoning hasn’t changed," she said. "The developer had suggested a change of use of the area and we have concurred with that because it complies with the policies and objectives of the development plan.”

The motion was put to a vote and agreed, with 16 councillors voting in its favour, while Tormey voted against it, and her seven fellow Fine Gael councillors abstained, as did councillor Patrick Quinlan of the National Party.

The motion was put to a vote and agreed, with 16 councillors voting in its favour, while Tormey voted against it, and eight councillors abstained.