dun laoghaire - passivehouseplus.co.uk

A highly sustainable rapid-build dwelling built for Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council may be one of the first, if not the first ever dwelling, completely finished off-site in Ireland .

Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown County Council has voted emphatically to make the passive house standard mandatory for new buildings. At a meeting on Tuesday night, councillors voted by 26 votes to 13 in support of putting the clause in the local authority’s development plan for 2016 to 2022.

The Department of the Environment has written to Dublin’s local authorities warning against adopting higher quality housing standards – and threatened to overrule Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown’s proposal to mandate the passive house standard – in correspondence obtained by Passive House Plus magazine.

On Monday the Irish Times reported that both Nama and the Construction Industry Federation (CIF) had objected to plans by Dún Laoghaire Rathdown County Council to make the passive house house standard mandatory for all new buildings under the local authority’s latest development plan, which is due to come into force next year.

When the two worlds of heritage and development collide opinions frequently become polarised and fraught with difficulty. There are few more vexed issues, as Tim Carey, Heritage Officer with Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council reveals