30,000 Jobs To Be Created During Docklands Development

Around 30,000 construction and ancillary jobs are expected to be created after the National Asset Management Agency (NAMA) announced plans to develop the docklands in Dublin.

The residential programme will require total funding of €5.6 billion and 20,000 new homes will also be built.

Dublin Central TD, Mary Lou McDonald, welcomed the news however, she said that the needs of local communities must be given prime consideration.

Deputy McDonald said: "The development of the docklands as a hub in the city of Dublin is a welcome thing. The disasters of the last Dublin Docklands Authority must not be repeated. Development in the Docklands must be balanced and in tune with the needs of local communities and the city as a whole.

"However, the record of this government is that they're good on rhetoric and bad at delivery. In the past development of the docklands, communities were very much left behind – this cannot happen again.

"Those developers who might build in the Docklands again, but who have left behind them disasters like Longboat Quay, need to make good their shoddy work. It's not good enough for the government to allow these same characters build big commercial ventures and at the same time allow residents, as in Longboat Quay, struggle with the consequences of their second-rate building."

Frank Daly, NAMA Chairman, said: "NAMA has committed itself to funding the delivery of much-needed office space and quality homes and, in doing so, it hopes to leave a lasting and positive legacy for the coming decades.

"We are proud to be in a position to use NAMA's unique blend of property and financial expertise, funding capability and scale to benefit the taxpayers the Agency was set up to serve."

(CD/LM)