An Bord Pleanála has refused permission for a large-scale housing development in Limerick city.

The Canal Bank, Corbally, development would have comprised seven separate blocks of build-to-rent and student apartments, ranging in height from six to ten storeys, and containing 442 residential units.

The scheme also incorporated common areas, café and three retail units, creche and a management facilities building.

The four-hectare site is bounded by City Canal to the north, Pa Healy Road to the south, and Park Road to the east.

The plans involved demolishing a 530-sq-metre warehouse and building both car and secured bicycle parking spaces.

'Shoebox' apartments

Environmental Trust Ireland lodged an objection to the proposed development in January. Welcoming the decision, which issued on 7 May, its president Michelle Hayes said the scale of the proposed development was “completely inappropriate” and that she was delighted with the delighted with the An Bord Pleanála decision.

“The sheer scale and density of these shoebox built-to-rent apartments in this COVID-19 pandemic crisis is completely inappropriate, where social distancing is paramount to ensuring the health and safety of residents,” she said.

"Environmental Trust Ireland is also delighted that An Bord Pleanála attached great significance to the ecological and environmental concerns which we raised and, in particular, the finding that there were deficiencies and inadequacies in the Nature Impact Statement submitted by the developer."

Decision to fight

Explaining her decision to fight the application, solicitor Michelle Hayes, who practises in a Glentworth Street partnership, said that Limerick and the lower River Shannon were designated as special areas of conservation.

“All developments in this area should be examined in the light of this, and also in the light of EU habitats legislation, for instance, on otters and bats.

“Anything that has an adverse effect on an EU-protected site should only be permitted where there is an overriding public interest that the development goes ahead,” she said.

Pandemic assessment

“Given the current COVID-19 pandemic, these types of densely-packed residential units need to be re-evaluated and re-assessed,” she said.

“We can anticipate more people working from home and needing the space to do so. Cramped apartments will not suffice for this. Tightly-packed apartments are also completely unsuitable for social distancing,’ Michelle continued.

“While this isn’t a shared co-living development, that type of development will also need to be seriously examined,” Hayes concluded.

Conservation objectives

An Bord Pleanála said it was not satisfied that the proposed development would not adversely affect the area, in view of its conservation objectives.

Michelle Hayes previously objected successfully to the first Strategic Housing Development in Limerick, at Punches Cross, on similar environmental grounds.