THE LAND DEVELOPMENT Agency (LDA) has ruled out the delivery of affordable housing at the vacant Baggot Street Hospital after carrying out a site inspection.
The Journal previously reported that the HSE only officially informed the LDA that it planned to sell off the hospital after the huge building in Dublin city centre had already been put up for sale.
Public bodies that are planning to sell off public land – such as the former hospital – are required by law to offer the land for sale to the LDA first.
The LDA is the State body that develops land for affordable and social housing.
In a statement to The Journal today, the LDA said it has conducted a full site screening assessment of the site and identified “a number of challenges to the development of this building for affordable housing”.
“The building is a protected structure and it is located in a conservation area. The LDA’s assessment concluded that significant investment would be required in order to deliver a residential scheme within this building, which would make it unviable for the delivery of affordable housing,” said the LDA.
The agency went on to state that it is LDA’s remit under current legislation is to deliver affordable and social housing at scale in areas, and on land, where doing so represents value for money and allows the developed homes to be made available at reduced cost or at reduced rents.
However, it is understood that homes could not be offered here for reduced cost.
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The LDA said it has acquired and continues to acquire such sites in Dublin and is also working in partnership with Dublin City Council and with private homebuilders to complete large-scale projects.
In October, HSE boss Bernard Gloster said while it didn’t make sense for the HSE to keep the building, he was fine if any other state agency wanted to keep it.
“They’ll have to tell me, because I can’t just take it off the market and be lumbered with it again for the next five years trying to mind it.”
At the time, he said Baggot Street Hospital had been up on the register “as surplus to our requirements now since mid 2024 and we can’t continue to carry the risk of an empty building and the cost of security and maintaining it. We have put it on the open market”.
Local TD James Geoghegan raised the matter with the Taoiseach, stating that the LDA should get involved now that the building is up for sale to see if the hospital can be converted into cost-rental housing.
Labour’s Ivana Bacik and TD Alan Kelly have made similar calls, stating that the property should be utilised for housing needs in the city centre.
The LDA has already delivered more than 2,000 homes in Dublin and the Greater Dublin area including 597 in Shanganagh in Dublin 18, 607 in Seven Mills, 180 in Cookstown and 247 in Hansfield.
It said it is currently working on large-scale sites including in Baldoyle/Stapolin, Clongriffin, Donore Project at St Teresa’s Gardens, Skerries, Balbriggan, Cromcastle in Coolock, Cherry Orchard and Bluebell.
