Bord Pleanála overturns Dublin City Council Capel St hotel refusal

An Bord Pleanála has issued a rebuke to Dublin City Council's contention that there are too many hotels in the capital's city centre area.

The appeals board has given the green light to Ringline Investments for a nine-storey 142 bedroom hotel for Capel Street in Dublin which overturns a ruling by the council refusing planning permission after expressing concerns about the “existing over-concentration” of hotels in the area.

The council said plans for the hotel at the corner of Capel Street and Strand Street Little would “exacerbate” the over concentration of hotels and fundamentally undermine the vision for the provision of a dynamic mix of uses within the city centre area.

The council stance was supported in a joint observation by Labour councillors Joe Costello, Declan Meenagh and Darragh Moriarty to An Bord Pleanála who agreed with the city council that there was an over-concentration of hotels at the expense of appropriate mixed use developments.

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Concerns

In a separate observation to the appeals board, An Taisce also raised concerns about the number of hotels in the area and the lack of residential development.

The council pointed out that around 2,150 hotel rooms had been permitted in recent years within 350m of the proposed hotel site.

However, the appeals board has granted planning permission after concluding that the hotel would constitute an acceptable quantum and density of development in the area.

The board made its ruling after inspector Stephen Ward said that he did not consider that the proposed development would lead to an excessive concentration of hotels in the vicinity of the site .

Mr Ward said that the council’s refusal decision did “not appear to be supported by any specific policy basis or an established density standard for hotels”.

Mr Ward said that subsequent to the refusal, the council granted planning permission for two hotels on other sites in the Capel Street area and these decisions had been appealed to the planning board.