Land agency to pay ESB €3.1m for Cork City site for development of 350 homes

Six-acre site is adjacent to the Wilton Shopping Centre and near Cork University Hospital and UCC

The LDA is the agency with responsibility for the development of unused land in State ownership, primarily for housing.

The Land Development Agency (LDA) is set to pay the ESB €3.1m for a site at Wilton in Cork City — more than six times its previous valuation.

The six-acre site, adjacent to the Wilton Shopping Centre and near Cork University Hospital and UCC, had been earmarked for the construction of 350 homes by the LDA.

The LDA is the agency with responsibility for the development of unused land in State ownership, primarily for housing.

The agency had previously stated last March that following the publication of the LDA Act 2021, which enshrined in law how all land to be acquired by the agency was to be priced, a fresh “valuation of the land is now under way”.

The agency said in March that “subject to the completion of that process the land will transfer to the LDA” and that the agency would be “progressing detailed designs” of the site for housing.

In October, the Department of Housing had agreed €2.6m in compensatory fees was to be included in any deal for the site — compensation to the ESB for the inconvenience of selling the lands — on top of a previous €500,000 valuation of the site.

A spokesperson for the Department of Housing said the LDA was an "independent agency and decisions relating to acquisition of lands are a matter for the LDA Board”.

The LDA itself said the agency was “working closely with the ESB on a number of potential projects for the delivery of affordable housing”, which are “at an early stage”.

A spokesperson said the money paid by the agency for land from other State bodies was “generally... immaterial in comparison to the overall delivery costs of projects”.

“In any land deal involving the LDA, sites are carefully and independently valued and the LDA is always focused on the need to ensure value for money,” the spokesperson said.

The Department of Communications, the ESB’s supervising body, declined to comment, while a spokesperson for the ESB said the State-owned company “is in ongoing discussions with the LDA and all such discussions are commercially sensitive”.

The LDA was established in 2018 amid an escalating housing crisis to repurpose unused State lands.

Earlier this year, the agency said a maximum of 67,000 homes could be built on public land across Ireland.