Infrastructure fears take centre stage in ongoing Dunsink debate

As Dublin looks toward the Dunsink City Quarter, a divide has emerged between those desperate for new homes and residents who fear the development will repeat the city’s history of building units without the infrastructure to support them

News Stephen Holland Local Democracy Reporter 16:43, 14 Aug 2026 View 2 Images Dunsink area render

Concerns around insufficient infrastructure lie at the heart of the Dunsink development, whose public consultation received almost 400 submissions.

It is a common story that has been seen plenty of times before, new housing developments are proposed to meet the needs of one of Dublin ’s most pressing crises, but those living there feel as though their views are not being properly heard. This was felt as strongly as ever with the publication of Fingal County Council’s 18,500-home Dunsink City Quarter plan last June.

The public consultation phase saw a community campaign emerge, particularly among residents in Finglas on the border between Fingal and Dublin city’s local authorities. The key concerns were about infrastructure, environmental safeguards and perceived lack of public engagement with easily accessible information.

Scribblestown Lane residents like Niamh Lambert spoke about the threat of such a large development on the heritage of the area and warned that routing heavy traffic down narrow country lanes would require swallowing valuable green space. Locals like Ernie Beggs and Sinn Féin TD Dessie Ellis felt the potential adverse effects of building homes over what was once Ireland’s largest landfill had also not been given enough consideration.

An opinion piece in the Irish Times by David McWilliams called out objectors as people who already have homes “denying them to others”. Mr McWilliams wrote that in “the biggest housing crisis in peacetime Europe” residents are “intent on obstructing a solution to the housing shortage”.

This too saw pushback, with Independent Cllr Gavin Pepper stating that this “skips over the reality that people around here deal with the consequences of bad planning every day”. Most of those who have expressed concerns about the Dunsink development have not explicitly said they are against housing - the most common question has been about whether such a high-density project will overwhelm already overstretched schools, GPs, and roads.

Cllr Pepper stated that Dublin is a city “shaped by decades of delayed infrastructure, half-finished projects and promises that never landed”. The draft plan for Dunsink references the Luas Green Line extension to Tyrrelstown as a transport link that will serve the incoming population, but any one who has been holding out hope for the Dublin Metro since it was first announced in 2000 knows how often things can be delayed.

“Dunsink isn’t just a big empty site inside the M50. It’s a former dump, boxed in by the motorway, cut off from rail, and surrounded by communities who’ve been waiting years for proper investment. You can’t wave that away as a small engineering issue. And when locals say they don’t trust transport to arrive before housing, they’re not being awkward. They’re remembering Metro North , DART Underground, BusConnects and all the big plans that were talked up and then parked,” Cllr Pepper stated.

Another common concern is the impact of high-rise apartments, which the Ballymun-Finglas Cllr Pepper said he’s all too familiar with. “We’ve already seen what happens when big blocks go up without schools, parks, services or decent streets. A city isn’t made of units. It’s made of places people can actually live in,” he said.

Rather than being an issue of “homeowners versus non-homeowners,” he said what the people of the area need is to be able to trust that infrastructure to support an expanded community is being put in place. “Ireland needs homes. But it also needs trust, proper planning and infrastructure that arrives when promised. Until that happens, people are right to speak up,” he stated.

Supporting the development is Mayor of Fingal Cllr Tony Murphy, who told Dublin Live he understands the concerns people have and that reading figures like 18,500 new homes can be “daunting”. He agrees infrastructure is needed, but warned against the potential delays caused by objections

“We're looking at building these houses, but we could be in the courts for five or seven years where we never have a shovel in the ground,” he said of a potential An Coimisiún Pleanála appeal. Cllr Murphy said Ireland has a “very robust democratic process with regard to planning” but that can also be its “Achilles heel,” as community pushback can really impact a project’s progression potential.

He believes infrastructure will be coming “in tandem or even in advance” of much of the Dunsink development. While community campaigners often speak about the project in its totality, Cllr Murphy said it is important to understand that “it’s going to be built out in part at the beginning”.

The entire scope of the project opens the doors for thousands of new homes, at 435 hectares, the Dunsink site is over 60% the size of the Phoenix Park. Fianna Fáil Paul McAuliffe TD said the addition of 46,000 would make it “bigger than Swords” and "significantly larger than Finglas itself”.

This is true, but the initial phase of the draft plan just sets in motion the first 2,500 homes, which is less than 15% of the long-term vision. Cllr Murphy said they are trying to plan ahead and putting the infrastructure in place is an important step in that process.

He spoke about the growth he’s witnessed in his own area of Balbriggan with a population growing by 8,000 in a short period of time. “We would have suffered the consequences of not having the requisite number of schools in place, we didn't have enough crèches, there was a massive capacity issue with doctors,” Cllr Murphy said.

With Dunsink, Cllr Murphy said that there is an understanding of the capacity needs that is data-driven. He believes the development must proceed with the concerns of residents in mind and that together they can “try and collaborate to build with confidence”.

“At the end of the day, what we have at the minute is we have a situation where people with houses are complaining and obstructing people from getting houses who have none, and that's wrong,” Cllr Murphy said.

“We do have to allow people to have a voice and their concerns have to be considered in the best possible way. However, we have to look at the reality of one element that's actually limiting our ability to feed the demand that's there at the moment in a timely manner. That seems to be that people have the opportunity to challenge grants of permission at the highest level, which causes the problem.”

Cllr Murphy believes Fingal County Council has a strong track record for delivering housing developments and said that they have been meeting their targets in the National Planning Framework. Now that the public consultation phase has come to an end, he said the next step is to take on board those considerations to come up with the variations.

Ultimately, Cllr Murphy said “we need to get on with it” as without progressing large-scale developments “we're going to be seen as a failed generation of people”. “We need to put the thinking cap on and say let’s get on with this,” he said.

“We have the smarts, we have the infrastructure, we know how to do it. We just need to change a few things, change the tweaks. Know where the problems are and get on with it.”

With upwards of 400 submissions on the Dunsink draft plan, Cllr Murphy said they are “going to tell you its own story that it’s not going to be straightforward planning it”. While Dunsink may take time, communication, and collaboration, Cllr Murphy believes that it can be delivered satisfactorily in a way that meets the needs of the area.

This content is funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme

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