Warning notices are likely to be issued to religious groups in the Fingal County Council area who are using warehouses on industrial estates as places of worship, according to the Mayor of Fingal, Kieran Dennison.
He
said a survey of industrial units in Dublin 15 found that 20 warehouses
in the Blanchardstown area were being used for worship.
Most of
them are in areas zoned for “general employment” or “high technology”,
in which places of worship are not permitted by the Fingal development
plan.
Mr Dennison said there were health and
safety concerns relating to the use of some of the warehouses,
particularly ones located close to chemical plants.
Religious groups using warehouses for
worship in Ireland include Muslims, Pentecostals and Orthodox
Christians. These are the fastest-growing religious communities in
Ireland.
Fingal has one of the highest population
growth rates in the country and recorded the largest increase of
non-Irish nationals in the 2011 census.
Almost
7,000 people in Fingal are Muslim but there are no purpose-built mosques
in the area. Fingal is also home to 22 per cent of Apostolic and
Pentecostal members in Ireland.
Affordable
Warehouses are affordable places to rent for migrant groups who often struggle to secure suitable premises for worship.
They may start out in residential
houses, but parking restrictions, planning regulations and complaints
because of traffic congestion often result in relocation to industrial
units.
Shaykh Muhammad Umar Al-Qadri of the Al
Mustafa Islamic Centre, which is located in Coolmine industrial estate
in Blanchardstown, says it is their fourth premises since 2004.
The
first building was a residential house in an estate in Clonee.
“The
neighbours initially had no problem with us. But then they saw people
wearing different types of clothes, and every Friday they saw men with
long black beards coming to pray. I would say there was a sense of fear.
This is when the local authorities were informed. We were given one
month to leave. It was a very difficult time.”
Their
current premises is the third industrial unit they have rented and the
largest so far. It can accommodate 375 adults. They have spent €40,000
on it and have taken a five-year lease.
“If we
didn’t have industrial units as places of worship, the Muslim community
of Dublin 15 would have nowhere else to go for their social, cultural
and religious needs,” Shaykh Umar says. “The Islamic Centre is also a
platform which connects the Muslim migrant community with the local
service providers”.
Mr Dennison said the council
recognised “the need of migrant communities to have places to congregate
and to worship. However, as a planning authority we are obliged to
ensure compliance with the planning regulations.”
No objections
He said that so far as he was aware, no objections to industrial units being used for worship had been submitted to the council.
The recent
survey of industrial units was intended to provide information on
activities taking place in them and was not focused on religious
activity.
“We’re not going to start turfing people out of industrial
units overnight,” he said. “We’re working very hard to find a way around
this because the last thing we want to do is put people out of places
of worship.
“Changing the zoning to allow places
of worship in industrial estates in not an option. But we will begin
working on the county development plan in 18 months and we could look at
zoning other sites around the county for places of worship”.