5.3 - Challenges

With significant population growth forecast, Dublin City must consider how best to plan for new and growing communities and an increasingly diverse as well as ageing population. It is important that the city has adequate social and affordable housing that is attractive to all. There is a necessity to provide high quality, appropriately managed, sustainable, adaptable housing units with good levels of amenity that readily provide for changing needs over time including the needs of families with children, older people and disabled persons.

The development plan includes a socially inclusive housing strategy for the existing and future population of the city including the needs of those that require social housing. The Housing Strategy (Appendix 1) indicates that there is sufficient, well-serviced land to meet the housing targets set out in the core strategy. There remains however, ongoing challenges in terms of housing delivery in the city. There is a pressing need to facilitate a significant increase in affordable housing output whilst creating high quality accommodation to address a range of housing issues including homelessness.

There is also a need to ensure that there is a corresponding level of social and community infrastructure provision to match the rate of population growth planned for Dublin city over the plan period. This will require the creation of sustainable communities and compact neighbourhoods that are well served by social infrastructure at a neighbourhood level. The co-ordinated provision of a range of facilities and services to cater for all, such as schools, care centres, cultural and community spaces, will require an inter-agency response to ensure the timely provision of such social infrastructure. It will also be essential to ensure that community facilities and services between neighbourhoods and communities are optimised throughout the city.