The quality of planning and detail in this chapter is generally of a very high standard and I am supportive of the vast majority of objectives outlined in the chapter.
However, delivering only 7% of the required residential units in the city center as outline in table 10.2 is a key weakness of the overall plan.
I recognise this is because the City Council has only been able to identify 2ha of suitable development land in the city centre (table 10.3). I suggest that this requires an urgent reaudit of underutilised land within the city centre. A cursory desktop review of sites familiar to me within the city centre yielded almost 16 ha of underutilized land (4ha tier 1+2 & 12ha tier 3).
It is absolutely imperative for Cork city's ability to continue to attract mobile international talent and hence investment as well as for the housing needs of local people in the city centre that more residential development in the central area of the city is achieved then it's laid out in this plan.
Failure to do so will fatally undermind all of the other good work to date.