Latest news with #DúnLaoghaireRathdown
BreakingNews.ie
a day ago
- Business
- BreakingNews.ie
Annual house price growth slows slightly to 7.5%
House prices in Ireland grew at an average annual rate of 7.5 per cent in April, according to the Central Statistics Office (CSO). The headline rate of house price inflation was essentially unchanged from March's 7.6 per cent and down from 8 per cent in February, the CSO said on Thursday. Advertisement The annual rate of price growth in Dublin, where supply shortages are most acute, accelerated slightly from 6 per cent in March to 6.2 per cent in April. Outside Dublin, house prices were up 8.6 per cent in the 12 months to the end of April, the CSO said, essentially unchanged from March. The median or midpoint price of a home purchased over the period was €365,000, down slightly from €362,500 in the 12 months to March. Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown remained the most expensive local authority area in the Republic, with the median price of a home sold standing at €670,000. The A94 Eircode in Blackrock, Co Dublin, was the most expensive postcode with a median price of €750,000.
BreakingNews.ie
2 days ago
- Business
- BreakingNews.ie
Manna Air Delivery facing local opposition after lodging plans for new hub in Dundrum
Drone delivery service, Manna Air Delivery, has lodged contentious plans to establish a new aerial food delivery hub for Dundrum in Dublin 14. Manna Drones Ltd has lodged the plans with Dún Laoghaire Rathdown County Council for the aerial delivery hub on lands at an existing car park site to the rear of Main Street and the rear of Holy Cross Church in Dundrum. Advertisement However, the plan is already encountering local opposition with one objector, Olive Donnelly, telling the council 'Drone use in residential areas poses serious risks. In Dublin 15, Manna Drones has already caused widespread disruption: persistent noise, low-altitude flights over homes and schools and repeated residents' complaint… these impacts are real, ongoing, and unacceptable'. This claim was contradicted by Manna Air Delivery on Wednesday with a spokesman stating 'in Dublin 15 we have received a warm welcome. We have received a total 77 complaints out of servicing an area of 150,000 people in over a year.' In the Dáil last week, opposition TDs warned of the growing noise disturbance by food delivery drones in Dublin, with Social Democrats TD Garry Gannon warning of a 'dystopian future' of drone activity. The application is Manna Drones Ltd's first such application for the Dún Laoghaire Rathdown Co Council area and in a planning report lodged with the plans, Downey Chartered Town Planners state that the proposal 'represents an appropriately informed and correct approach to the much-needed service at this location on a currently underutilised area of the existing car park site'. Advertisement The report states that Manna Drones is seeking to enhance and improve delivery services within the Dundrum area, and the benefits of enabling drone delivery from such a location include faster delivery, efficiency, cost savings, reduced environmental impact, increased accessibility and improved customer experience. Downey Chartered Town Planners state that the development has 'been scaled in a manner where any existing amenities of the area are not adversely affected in any way, nor any degradation of privacy arising from this subject development'. Downey Planning states that 'the proposed development is considered to be a positive contribution to the locality'. The report states that 'in an age where environmental consciousness is paramount, drone operations present a sustainable alternative to traditional delivery methods'. Advertisement The report adds: 'Indeed, electric drones offer a greener and more efficient choice than normal delivery methods, while ensuring delivery in a timely manner without burdening transport networks.' Already, four objections have been lodged against the scheme. In one, Anita Phelan told the council that the sound of the drones is another noise disturbance which will undoubtedly take from the serenity of the space close to Dundrum Church. Ms Phelan said: 'Please take on board people's need for quiet spaces which ultimately affects their quality of life, which surely ranks above quicker delivery service of burgers and lattes and refuse this application." Katherine Butterly and James Ryan live with their two young children at their home, 1.4km from Holy Cross Church car park. Advertisement They have told the council that 'we know that it is likely that the drones will pass over our home. We believe that this will pitch the interests of a few (companies who will profit from this proceeding) over the many thousands of local residents in this built up area who would oppose it'. Mrs Priscilla Lawrence Launois has told the council, 'I live very close to the back of Dundrum church and fear deliveries will pass overhead, causing excessive noise pollution'. A spokesman for Manna Air Delivery said that the company has never flown drones in Dundrum. He said, 'We are not planning to fly imminently in Dundrum." He said: 'In Dundrum planning permission has been applied for as per requirements but we would likely not be flying in the next few months.' He said that most recently, Manna Air Delivery has begun rolling out quieter propellers that reduce cruise-flight noise to 59 dBA—noticeably quieter than typical traffic outside a home, which averages between 70 and 75 dBA.
Irish Times
2 days ago
- Business
- Irish Times
Drone delivery service Manna plans Dundrum hub for food delivery
Drone delivery service Manna Drones has lodged plans with Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council for an aerial food delivery hub in Dundrum . . The proposed site for the hub is on an existing car park to the rear of Holy Cross Church and off the main street. However, the plan is already encountering local opposition, with four objections lodged. In one, objector Olive Donnelly told the council that 'drone use in residential areas poses serious risks. In Dublin 15, Manna has already caused widespread disruption: persistent noise, low-altitude flights over homes and schools and repeated residents' complain ... these impacts are real, ongoing, and unacceptable.' READ MORE [ Deliveroo tests drone deliveries with Manna partnership Opens in new window ] This claim was contradicted by Manna on Wednesday with a spokesman saying that 'in Dublin 15 we have received a warm welcome. We have received a total 77 complaints out of servicing an area of 150,000 people in over a year.' In the Dáil last week, Opposition TDs warned of the growing noise disturbance by food delivery drones in Dublin with Social Democrat TD Garry Gannon warning of a 'dystopian future' of drone activity. [ Irish cities face 'dystopian future' due to drone deliveries, TD warns, as clip of noise is played in Dáil Opens in new window ] The application is Manna's first such application for the Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council area and in a report lodged with the plans, Downey Chartered Town Planners said the proposal 'represents an appropriately informed and correct approach to the much-needed service at this location on a currently underutilised area of the existing car park site'. The report said Manna Drones' proposal had 'been scaled in a manner where any existing amenities of the area are not adversely affected in any way, nor any degradation of privacy arising from this subject development'. In another objection to the proposal, Anita Phelan told the council that the sound of the drones was another noise disturbance which would undoubtedly take from the serenity of the space close to Dundrum church.
Irish Times
08-06-2025
- General
- Irish Times
Hungry goats divide Killiney as firefighting grazers move in again
Fresh from the drama of the planning application near Bono's house , leafy Killiney's WhatsApp chats are ablaze again with a new debate: are goats really the best way to manage the local environment? Here's how it works: a herd of old Irish goats – formerly farmyard favourites but now surviving mostly as marauding gangs of escapees in the uplands – is brought to a patch of hill under supervision. They chomp away, and the vegetation-less area becomes a fire break. This is of immediate concern in Killiney where a 2022 gorse fire at Mullins Hill threatened houses and left two firefighters with injuries . But it's an increasingly popular tactic for councils and land managers. They have been deployed, or are about to be, at: Howth Head and Dalkey Quarry in Dublin; Ardmore in Waterford ; Achill Island ; the Burren in Co Clare; and at Coole Park in Co Sligo, eating shrubs whose ancestors were once admired by WB Yeats. Sounds like a good plan, then? Sort of. The goats are not picky eaters. Dún Laoghaire Rathdown Council's 2024 biodiversity report notes that on nearby Dalkey Island, all is low grass and 'no woody plants have become established, probably due to constant grazing by goats'. That's not an ideal outcome for the environmentally conscious. READ MORE Author and rewilded Eoghan Daltun says the idea is 'the height of ecological illiteracy'. 'The whole of Ireland was once covered in habitats like rainforests, bog, other types of forest – none of them would burn because they would all retain water and let it out slowly. The English ecologist Oliver Rackham once said that native woodlands burn like wet asbestos.' [ Emerald Isle no more: Why is nature eroding so fast? Opens in new window ] With the woods gone, the scrub does present a fire risk for a period, but letting the woods regrow is a better solution than introducing goats every year forever, he says. The council says the beasts are 'less destructive than frequent use of machinery, with a lower carbon footprint and more sensitive to wildlife' – but those are both degrowth strategies. 'Concreting over the whole place would achieve the same thing,' says Daltun. 'And it wouldn't be much worse for biodiversity.' Marcus Collier, assistant professor of botany at Trinity College Dublin, says the picture is more complicated. 'Much of the academic research points to 'grazing for biodiversity' initiatives as having positive outcomes in most cases as well as being novel 'nature-based solutions' for reducing fire intensity,' he said. 'Biodiversity loss is strongly linked to over- and under-grazing, so getting the balance right is tricky.' For Independent Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown councillor Hugh Lewis, the 2024 pilot in Killiney achieved its objectives 'whilst also having popular support', and is now an 'essential element of the wildfire management plan for the area'. 'This practice has been used successfully in Howth for many years,' he told Overheard. 'Its more recent effectiveness in Killiney can and should be emulated by other councils dealing with wildfire management across the country.' Zero back and sides it is for Ireland's hills then. An empty balloon Then US president Joe Biden with Corkman Micheál Martin in Carlingford in 2023 Fond memories abide in Mayo and Louth of the 2023 visit of former US president Joe Biden , who largely eschewed high-level diplomacy to focus on rattling around the homeplaces of his various ancestors making quips to smiling locals like any 80-year-old Irish American in the old country. He even made international news when he alleged that his distant cousin, the All Blacks-conquering rugby fullback Rob Kearney, 'beat the hell out of the Black and Tans' – again, fairly standard for an octogenarian Irish-American. He also referred to Micheál Martin as a 'proud son of Louth', among other inaccuracies. The Irish press pack was kept at a fair distance from Earth's most nuclear-armed man at the time, so it's interesting to read in CNN anchor Jake Tapper's book Original Sin of the US perspective on how the trip went. An energised Biden is described, giving his Ballina speech, visiting Knock and addressing the Houses of the Oireachtas. Then he encounters Michael D Higgins at Áras an Uachtaráin where, true to form, duties went 'on and on'. 'When the high wore off … it was akin to witnessing all the air empty from a balloon,' Tapper writes. Democratic Illinois Congressman Mike Quigley noted that Biden needed his bed – his speech was 'breathless, soft, weak'. He reminded the Congressman of his father who had recently died of Parkinson's, an observation with which another congressman, Brian Higgins, whose own father had died with Alzheimer's, agreed. 'When people see that stuff, it conjures up a view that there's something going on neurologically,' he said. Biden, who often had more important things to do than visit Knock, would remain president for almost two more years and, for a period, was ramping up to run for another four. A strange clutch of associates Lee Harvey Oswald: a composite of Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus? Photograph: AP For those who can't make it to the Bloomsday exhibition in Tehran previously highlighted by Overheard , there's an option closer to home: James Joyce's Ulysses and the Assassination of JFK, a lecture by Prof Barry Keane of the University of Warsaw at Dublin's James Joyce Centre on the day itself. A bolder effort even than Stephen Dedalus's algebraic proof that Shakespeare is the ghost of his own father, the spiel is as follows: 'Considered will be the figure of Lee 'Leopold' Oswald, who, like a composite of Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus, is out of sorts socially and professionally, nurses personal historical hurt and strong political views and is ill at ease in his domestic circumstances. What is more, Oswald boasts a strange clutch of associates and is given to flâneurial wanderings, turning up in the most unexpected of places.' It will be, the James Joyce Centre says, 'a demonstration that truth can be stranger than fiction'. Help wanted Photograph:Who runs Ireland? Nobody at the moment, with many of the State's most high profile jobs unoccupied. currently displays advertisements for chief executive officers at Fáilte Ireland (over the €6 billion tourist industry), Bus Éireann (over 100 million passenger journeys a year) and the National Concert Hall (over orchestras performing the Star Wars theme). That's on top of the other recruitment processes ongoing or ultimately necessary given the news in recent months. A new Garda commissioner is required , as is a head of the Arts Council after Maureen Kennelly was blocked from a full second term by Minister Patrick O'Donovan. Bernard Gloster has signalled his intention to step down from the HSE in March. The Housing Activation Office lacks a tsar, which it may or may not need according to the department's top civil servant, but is going to get anyway according to Jack Chambers. The FAI also lacks a chief football officer and a head of women's football after some premature departures. Children's Health Ireland is missing at least four board members. Talented administrators who yearn to explain themselves to backbench TDs on drizzly Thursday mornings at Leinster House: take your pick.
Irish Times
05-06-2025
- Business
- Irish Times
Lands near Leopardstown Racecourse to be developed for housing following long-awaited deal
More than 800 new social and 'affordable' homes will be built near Leopardstown Racecourse in south Co Dublin after a deal to transfer State-owned land to the Land Development Agency (LDA) from the national horse-racing body was reached. The long-awaited agreement, backed by Taoiseach Micheál Martin, will deliver housing on a 17-acre plot of Horse Racing Ireland (HRI) land next to the M50 motorway. The land is zoned for residential use but currently used for racecourse car parking. In the middle of a housing crisis, that prompted questions as to why the site was not being deployed for homes. The LDA, established to build housing on public land, believes the site ranks among the 'least constrained' vacant sites in State ownership with housing potential. The plan includes a new Luas station on the Green line to serve the area. READ MORE The HRI site at Carrickmines Little adjoins separate lands owned by Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council which are also earmarked for housing. The sites are on the city side of the M50. According to a recent LDA report, the combined HRI and council lands could eventually accommodate between 1,550 and 2,080 homes. The estimated project cost was up to €571 million. Housing development costs were in a range between €390 million and €480 million, with infrastructure costs of up to €91 million. There was no comment from HRI or the LDA but the deal is said to have followed an intervention from Mr Martin in which he pressed the parties to reach agreement. 'There's no update at the moment,' HRI said. [ Agencies rush to seal deal for Leopardstown Racecourse site before new land tax falls due Opens in new window ] The deal comes more than a year after a Government decision to approve the transfer of the HRI lands to the LDA. Agreement remained elusive for many months but the two State bodies have now resolved to work together in consultation with the council to develop a housing master plan for the area. The plan includes proposals to further develop the racecourse in lands the HRI will retain. Design and planning work is scheduled to begin immediately, although three years could pass before housing is built. The council's local area plan for the lands includes a school and a full-size sports pitch. The LDA believes as many as 70,800 homes could eventually be built on vacant publicly owned sites throughout the State. However, less than 20 per cent of the 102 parcels of public land earmarked for housing are deemed to have 'low levels' of constraints. 'These least-constrained lands have the potential for housing development in the near term for between 10,860 and 14,780 homes,' the LDA said in a report published in March. More than 80 per cent of the sites were 'moderately or significantly' constrained.
