The Irish Times

Dublin City Council's management is reviewing its controversial high-rise strategy following an overwhelmingly negative response from the public, as well as signals from An Bord Pleanla and the Department of the Environment. Michael Stubbs, assistant city manager in charge of the council's planning department, admitted that last month's public meetings in five city areas to discuss the draft policy, Maximising the City's Potential: A Strategy for Intensification and Height, "didn't go well". "There is a problem with this document in certain parts of the city," he said. "Based on what we've heard, we are going to have to evaluate what was said and think about how to bring the strategy forward. There are definitely things going to be changed." The main criticism related to exceptions in the document that would permit "random eruptions" of high-rise buildings outside previously designated areas - such as the Docklands, Heuston Station and other transport nodes such as Connolly and Tara Street stations. Michael Smith, former chairman of An Taisce, branded the draft strategy as "the most damaging document ever produced by Dublin City Council", saying it "would have comprehensively threatened Dublin's characteristic human scale".