The development, to be built in Clongriffin, north Dublin, will become
Ireland's largest Muslim Cultural Centre catering to the 40,000-strong
community living in the capital.
The application to Dublin City Council was submitted by an organisation
called the Dublin Welfare Society.
It was approved by planners and will cost a staggering €40m, which is
believed to be coming from a backer in the United Arab Emirates.
Clongriffin is a new town on the northern fringe of Dublin city.
It was planned for widescale development at the end of the Celtic Tiger
era and while many homes and apartments were built in the area, there are large
stretches of wasteland and some ghost estates.
The planned mosque will have a three-domed cultural centre and
conferencing facilities as well as primary and secondary schools onsite.
The 157,000 sq ft development will also include a 130- seat restaurant,
some apartments and landscaped gardens.
It will cater for 550 people for Friday prayers and as many as 3,000 for
the Eid festival.
The land near Clongriffin DART station is a vacant plot owned by
developer Gerry Gannon.
A condition of the planning permission is that the call to prayer is not
audible outside the Mosque area.
Amazing. So many Muslims living there.
ReplyDeleteWell, someone's got to go to church. "Nature abhors a vacuum" and all that.
Maybe that explains why seven million adult Moslems become Christians every year for past two decades.
DeleteThat figure of seven million is worldwide not only Ireland!
ReplyDeleteThere are over a hundred thousand Catholics working in Saudi Arabia. I don't see them being given the opportunity to build a church.
ReplyDelete