Modular houses may not be in place for Christmas

Dublin City Council has said it does not know if plans to provide 22 modular houses for homeless families by Christmas will be feasible. Senior officials were on Thursday night briefing councillors on plans to install the prefabricated homes on five sites.

Up to 153 two-storey three-bedroom modular houses are to be provided in Ballymun, Finglas, Darndale, Crumlin and Ballyfermot within the next four months. The move follows the announcement earlier this month by Minister for the Environment Alan Kelly that 500 modular houses would be provided as emergency housing in Dublin, 22 of them to be in place before Christmas.

The council said these first units will be provided through an “ultra-accelerated procurement” process and has sought tenders by next Monday. The successful tenderer must be in a position to provide the homes within four weeks.

“The programme [22 units] calls for a four-week design and construction period. However, it is yet to be determined by the market whether this is feasible,” councillors were told.

Concerns were raised on Thursday over the fast-track planning process being used to deliver the units. Fianna Fáil councillor Paul McAuliffe, who represents the Ballymun area, said planning mistakes in the past had resulted in “serious long-term” societal problems.

Short-term measure

“This is a short-term measure which will accommodate some of those people in emergency accommodation,” McAuliffe said. “I am, however, concerned that the principles of good planning are applied in each development regardless of what construction method is used.”

Residents surrounding the sites must be consulted regardless of what emergency planning process is used, he added. “This should not delay the process, but we can’t railroad existing communities.”

Sinn Féin TD Dessie Ellis said he had “serious concerns” about the sites and about the housing being concentrated in too few areas which were “predominantly working class, with high poverty levels and overstretched services already”.

“If families are to be housed temporarily in modular units, then the planning and servicing of these units and the sites where they are placed is paramount,” he said.

The homeless crisis was too severe to dismiss the option of modular housing, he added, but “that does not mean we can simply dump families anywhere and ignore the risk of ghettoising already hard-pressed families and communities”.

Dublin Simon Community said that all 153 units should be provided by Christmas: "Is the scale of the crisis not so large that 150 units cannot be fast-tracked before Christmas? This quite simply is too slow, too little and too late for families who are faced with long-term emergency accommodation."