With new housing developments, a constant back-and-forth over levels of parking

“I know you’re saying there’s parking, but is there enough parking?” asked Sinn Féin Councillor Edel Moran after a presentation on the long-awaited redevelopment of Cromcastle Court.

Councillors at Monday’s meeting of the North Central Area Committee were roundly pleased to see the project plans, they said.

Overall, said independent Councillor John Lyons: “They’re going to be wonderful homes. Energy rated, sustainable, fossil free, all the rest of it.”

Although, there were some noted concerns for council architect Mary McQuillan. The expected time between demolition and construction was one. Parking spaces were another.

Efforts to reduce transport emissions to tackle the climate crisis – coupled with attempts to reduce construction costs – led to a change in rules several years ago, reducing requirements for parking spaces in new apartment complexes and estates.

Instead, council policy has been to encourage developers to put in cycle parking and car-share spaces, said Brendan O’Brien, a council official back in July 2019.

But the amount of parking in new developments continues to be a point of conflict in the city, particularly in the inner suburbs where car-ownership rates are much higher than the core, but space is still tight.

The Dublin City Development Plan 2022–2028 explicitly calls for a decrease in car use in the city and a move to more active travel. “Promoting modal shift to more sustainable modes is a key requirement in adapting to climate action,” it says.

Figures on car trips, and car ownership, in the city show progress towards that goal. But not towards people choosing to ditch car ownership.

The Canal Cordon Count – which captures traffic passing over Dublin’s canals at peak times – has shown the continued gradual decline of car traffic as a share of all traffic over the past two decades, from 37 percent in 2006 to 25 percent in 2024.

Census figures, though, show more households than ever in the city have at least one car that they need to store. The percentage of carless households in Dublin city fell from about 34 percent in 2016 to 31 percent in 2022.

At the meeting

At the North Central Area Committee, Moran of Sinn Féin pressed the issue of parking at the new Cromcastle Court.

The plans show 152 new homes across two sites. 

“You’ve so many units. I know there can’t be one for every house but you’ve no idea of the parking situation in the area,” said Moran of Sinn Féin at the meeting.

McQuillan said that they didn’t have the exact number of parking spaces to hand. Both Moran and Cllr Jesslyn Henry of the Social Democrats advised her that people would be expecting the number at an information evening held on Tuesday in Kilmore Recreation Centre.

At Tuesday’s event, Henry said that she was told there would be parking spaces for 33 percent of the new dwellings. About 50 spaces, she said. 

A council spokesperson said, of that figure, that “this development has yet to go through the formal part 8 application stage so it would not be appropriate to comment in this regard”.

Kilmore, the area surrounding Cromcastle Court, has long-standing challenges with on-street parking.

Locals have complained for over a decade that the neighbourhood is used as an overflow car park for Beaumont Hospital – creating havoc for residents. 

They have been reluctant to pursue a pay-and-display and permit parking scheme though, Henry of the Social Democrats has said.

Henry says that there are concerns that the much-needed Cromcastle Court development will worsen the parking situation in the area.

Residents of Coultry Gardens in Ballymun have raised the same concerns over a planned development there.

Tuath Housing intends to build 463 apartments and duplexes in 10 new buildings, with a crèche and a mixed-use culture and community space.

The development will see 144 car parking spaces, and over 1,000 spaces for bicycle parking.

It’s unfortunately going to lead to tensions among existing residents and newcomers, says Natalie Barber, who grew up on Coultry Gardens.

Arguments over car spaces can divide a community before it has a chance to grow, she says. “It can fester. All of a sudden, you’re not talking to someone.”

In a joint statement from the council and Tuath Housing on 11 September, a spokesperson said they had recently increased the number of parking spaces after consultation with local representatives.

They reduced the number of homes and upped parking spaces, they said, “whilst ensuring the revised proposal remained compliant with planning policy and the local area plan before the application was submitted”.

Several residents of Coultry Gardens also said that people attending events in the nearby Axis Theatre and Rediscovery Centre often park around their area.

These events bring revenue into the area, says Barber.

A spokesperson for the Rediscovery Centre said on 11 September that for larger events, parking for visitors is limited.

“However, as an environmental organisation we always encourage sustainable modes of transport like cycling, carpooling and public transport where possible.”

Andrew Montague, an architect and former Labour councillor for Ballymun, has pointed for years to a model of parking provision in Freiburg, Germany as a possible solution. 

“It just seems to me to be an answer,” he says.

There, architects and developers, and residents, came up with designs for parking-free and car-free streets with multi-storey car parks on the edges of the neighbourhood.

These car parks don’t take much land, are cheaper to build, and flexible, he said. “So over time if more are needed, you can put another floor on.”

It doesn’t solve the problem of growing car ownership. But, he said, it could address the cost of underground and underused parking in complexes. 

“We haven’t done it, so people can’t see it. But it was successful where people tried it,” he says. 

Dublin City Council could step in and suggest this as a flexible middle ground to developers, he says. “It is an option there that hasn’t been tried.”

The Davitt: Three years on

Academics working in transport policy have said in the past that it can be hard for people to make the shift away from car use and car ownership. The biggest factor is convenience, some say.

Non-car travel has to be competitive, said transport consultant Derek Halden in 2019. If journeys are twice as fast by car than sustainable modes, people are likely to turn to cars, he said. 

Also, management methods are an important nudge too, he said, such as offering public-transport tickets and car-share memberships as part of residents’ facilities.

Residents in Drimnagh say that the management methods at The Davitt apartment complex there seem to have exacerbated the parking problems, though, rather than helped.

The Davitt raised rents in 2024, said Patricia Ryan on Wednesday, a resident of Galtymore Road to the rear of the apartment complex. 

The internal parking spaces are an optional add-on. Many of the renters felt that they could no longer afford it, Ryan said, so dropped it and park instead on the street. 

An Bord Pleanála approved a planning application for The Davitt, right next to the Grand Canal, near the Goldenbridge Luas stop, in 2019.

The plans were for 265 apartments, 119 car parking spaces, and 560 bike parking spaces. 

Observations raised concerns about parking in future, show the inspector’s report. But the complex is right by the Luas, the inspector noted, so it shouldn’t be a problem.

In 2023, after tenants moved in, and parking on nearby streets became a point of conflict, local councillors said they thought that the situation would settle.

But that hasn’t happened yet, Ryan and other local residents said this week. 

And the share of households with at least one car in Crumlin A, the electoral division that includes The Davitt, has actually risen, shows census data – from about 67 percent in 2016 to about 71 percent in 2022.

The parking situation around The Davitt has been a disaster, said Ryan. As she stood in her front door looking across at the complex, a woman pulled up at the mouth of her driveway.

She rushed from the car into a house a few doors up.

“I’ll just be a few minutes, Patricia,” she says. 

“No problem,” Ryan responds.

Because parking enforcement is so active in the area, and places to park are limited, Ryan says, neighbours allow each other to block one another’s driveways. Once they clear it with each other first, she says.

A few weeks ago, Ryan’s mother needed an ambulance to the house. A fire engine was first on the scene. As cars were parked on both sides, the engine completely blocked the road.

It created havoc, says Ryan.

Ryan, who is also the community liaison officer for Dynamic Drimnagh, a local community group, says that they try to work with the management of The Davitt, not against them.

The Davitt has a WhatsApp notification service for residents, Ryan says. When cars are clamped on the road, she says that locals will notify the management who will then inform people in the apartments.

“So they don’t come out first thing in the morning to a shock,” she says. It happens regularly, says Ryan.

Ryan is concerned that the situation will continue to worsen as other new developments spring up around Drimnagh.

She points to the First Lock development, nearby on Davitt Road, where, with 188 apartments planned, there will be 58 parking spaces, 69 including on-street options.