Varadkar’s Castleknock appeal slammed

The Taoiseach has come under fire over a strongly worded objection he raised last February to a four-storey development of 41 apartments at Brady’s Pub in Castleknock.

Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin said objections by leading Government figures, such as the Dublin West TD, to developments in their own constituencies wasn’t showing good leadership.

Martin’s comments followed an article by the Taoiseach in the Sunday Independent in which he wrote that high-rise apartment living in city centre locations was a “large part of the solution” to the housing crisis.

However, in his objection to the Castleknock development, the Fine Gael leader describes Fingal County Council’s decision to approve the plan as “a huge error of judgement” and calls it “unacceptable.”

He went on to describe the visual impact of the four-storey block as “a gratuitous affront” to the neighbourhood and claims it presents “a virtual picture which instantly jars on the mind’s eye.”

Martin wasted no time in dragging up the objection on the Newstalk Breakfast show.

“It sums up the fundamental disconnect between the rhetoric the Taoiseach and his ministers articulate and the reality on the ground in terms of substance and policy,” he said. “On the one hand we’re told in an article in the Sunday Independent that high rise is the way to go, meanwhile he’s objecting to high rise development in his own constituency. And he's doing it on the grounds that it will reduce the value of housing around in the neighbourhood. Now we do want to make housing affordable for people – and if our only interest is to keep the value of housing up, we're not going to build any new houses at all.”

An Taoiseach wasn’t the only high-profile Dublin West politician to object to the Castleknock development. Former Tánaiste and local TD, Joan Burton (Lab), also objected on a number of grounds including visual impact, density, traffic and parking.

The objections are currently under consideration by An Bord Pleanála. No date has been set for a decision.