134 affordable homes are in the pipeline for the St Joseph’s Road area of Mallow after Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien announced the construction of the houses under the Affordable Housing Fund (AHF) and Housing For All programme. The site for the houses is a land bank to the rear of Aldworth Heights, which Mallow Town Council bought in the early years of the millennium with a view to developing social and affordable housing. This plan failed to come to fruition in 2009 when the council voted not to build over 100 houses on the site after it was revealed that management plans to build two-storey houses on the site were in contravention of the 2004 Local Development Plan which allowed for only bungalows or dormer-style houses. Residents of Aldworth Heights and St Joseph’s Road objected to the plan at the time, claiming that access to the land bank should be from the Spa Road because traffic was already at high levels on St Joseph’s Road. It was also claimed that the council’s plan to use Aldworth Heights as an entrance to the housing was unsafe.
Detailed plans for the proposed 134 houses have not been published yet, but they will almost certainly reignite the debate about the heavy traffic already being experienced on St Joseph’s Road, and the need to construct a roundabout or access roads at Ballylough Cross on the Spa Road, a junction which many consider a potential accident hot spot for drivers attempting to turn right onto the Spa Glen/Ballyviniter roads.