The CIE is being offered a huge piece of land near the airport to free up city bus depots for housing

CIÉ has ​​been offered a huge plot of land near Dublin Airport for at least €10.5 million to house future new electric bus fleets and to build apartments at its current city bus depots.

Developer Melvin Properties Ltd (MPL)’s detailed proposal aims to allow the state transport company to free up space for 6,000 apartments and utilize a large greenfield site with direct access to renewable energy.

MPL’s Niall Melvin outlined the plan in a detailed submission to Fingal County Council, which also included a copy of an offer letter sent to CIÉ Group CEO Lorcan O’Connor earlier this month.

MPL owns 27 hectares of land on Stockhole Lane, east of the M1 motorway near Dublin Airport, which is currently a green zone zone. But MPL claims the country is ideal for a huge new bus depot and charging station that could house the entire Dublin Bus and Bus Éireann fleet.

The site is close to Eirgrid’s new 220 kV substation on the IDA campus in Belcamp, the “landing station for at least one and possibly two of the Irish Sea wind farms to be delivered over the next few years,” it said.

MPL has offered CIÉ the greenbelt land for at least €160,000 per acre – a 40 percent reduction on the typical value of land earmarked for public employment, it said.

MPL would give CIÉ eight months to conduct a public procurement process after the rezoning to give it time to consider alternative options.

The company said a number of bus depots across the city of Dublin “were widely judged to be an outdated and wasteful use of scarce sustainable housing land”.

It said it had carried out “a high-level review” of some Dublin bus depots to meet the total of 6,000 housing units and that it was inevitable “at some point” to move the two bus companies to a site near Dublin Airport.

“Future site searches would likely return a Thornton Hall-style overpay for a poor quality site. This proposal is the opposite of the Thornton Hall deal,” they said.