DCC staff are due to leave their Wood Quay office building by 2029 for a new site.

Dublin City Council’s decision to allocate €10 million to the Wood Quay refurbishment of offices due to be demolished within three years has come under fire. 

DCC staff are due to leave their Wood Quay office building by 2029 for a new site. Afterwards, the complex will be replaced with a 530-unit apartment block.  

However, the council has determined that the existing building needs energy and security upgrades; €3 million will be spent on office renovations and €2 million on making the building more energy efficient. 

Money has also been allocated for fire upgrades, corporate estate costs and electrical services.

On The Pat Kenny Show, Dublin City Council CEO Richard Shakespeare said the DCC Wood Quay office would be fully vacated before works begin. 

“There were two options”, he said on Newstalk. 

“There was one in terms of we could have played Tetris with the staff and done it in bits and pieces, or we could go in one fell swoop. 

"We're also responsible for delivering services. So from that perspective, trying to get a coherency in the services that we deliver - a single move would be preferable.

"I don't think moving in and then out repeatedly would have been productive.

“As a public servant, people like us to be creative, like us to be brave and like to be ambitious.”

He explained that the benefits of the Wood Quay site remain in the fact that it has been completely de-risked “from a planning perspective and an engineering perspective”. 

Dublin Bus in the city centre.

Wood Quay refurbishment: next steps

Mr Shakespeare explained that approximately 100 million euros had been spent de-risking the property and that a further 150 million may have been spent between acquisition and planning costs. 

“We’re getting a fairly good deal”, he said on The Pat Kenny Show Saturday.

"We have a model that we believe will work. And the intention would be the intention that they would be publicly owned homes", he said. 

The Dublin City Council CEO said they would be engaging with select members on what next steps will be for the property. 

It is almost 50 years since major protests took place in Dublin against plans by the City Council to build new civic offices on a Viking settlement discovered on Wood Quay.

“All we've done to date has been a massive study. It was a very large study to see if you were putting housing on it. 

“​​I've had all sorts of suggestions in terms of how we could use the space and even actually celebrate the Viking heritage of the site on site.”

He acknowledged that the conversion of the space after 2029 into rented public properties was not an "optimum position" but an attempt from the DCC to "deliver more social and affordable units."

Main Image: Dublin City Council offices on Wood Quay. Picture by: PA.