Eight months for ‘rapid build’ homes, says Dublin City Council

Construction has begun on a second batch of "rapid build" modular homes for families living in hotels, but Dublin City Council has conceded they will take eight months to finish.

Contractors ABM Construction began work this week on 39 modular houses at a site at St Helena’s Drive in Finglas. The houses are the second phase of rapid build housing announced more than a year ago as an emergency response to the housing crisis.

The first 22 houses on Balbutcher Lane in Ballymun were to have been finished last December, but families did not move into the homes, which cost €180,000 each, until May this year.

June completion

A tender for the next four sites, in Finglas, Darndale, Cherry Orchard and Drimnagh, was advertised by the council last December, with a completion date of June this year for all 131 homes.

However, last March the council cancelled this tender, saying it had received an “insufficient number of applicants who confirmed they would be able to meet the deadline in order to conduct a competition”.

It reissued tenders that split the project into four lots, with different completion dates for each site. These range from October to December this year.

First quarter

However, last month the council said it had revised the timeline for completion of these homes to the first quarter of next year.

Work began this week on the Finglas site, where 11 three-bedroom houses and 28 two-bedroom houses – one fewer house than originally planned – will be built.

The council said the work is “scheduled to be completed in 32 weeks”.

Contractors are expected on site at Mourne Road in Drimnagh next week to start erecting 29 houses. Work is expect to start the remaining two sites (Belcamp in Darndale with 38 homes, and Cherry Orchard with 24) in the following two weeks.

Dublin City Council did not respond to queries yesterday on how long it would take to provide these homes, or which companies had been awarded the contract to build the housing at the three sites.