LAST UPDATE | 6 Jul

HOUSING MINISTER JAMES Browne wants to change the rules for new apartment buildings in a bid to reignite construction in the sector.

It is understood that Browne is bringing the proposals to Cabinet this week to make apartments more attractive for developers by altering certain requirements around minimum sizes and communal facilities, with the number of flats in the pipeline drying up according to recent figures.

These moves will seek to improve the viability of apartment building by seeking to address higher development costs, reducing costs per unit, according to a housing source.

The proposed changes, contained in the Planning Design Standards for Apartments, Guidelines for Planning Authorities (2025) bill, are understood to be aiming for a €50,000 to €100,000 cost reduction per apartment.

Opposition parties have criticised the minister’s plans, claiming they won’t address the rising costs for would-be residents and will lead to less comfortable living standards in turn.

Browne has flagged for some weeks that he has been looking at the issues raised by the construction sector and developers with him around apartment viability, inviting developers to express interest in apartment building last month.

He also recently has unveiled plans that would see see rents for newly built apartments tied to the rate of inflation rather than capped at 2%.

The drafted guidelines in the latest plan are informed by a costings project undertaken by the Land Development Agency (LDA), which looked at the layout and design of individual of units and ⁠the provision communal facilities.

The changes included in Browne’s reforms include

• - Apartment mix: to allow more one-bedroom apartments and studios in a building;
• - Communal facilities: such community facilities within apartment schemes will not be required on a mandatory basis, in a bid to improve the viability of the development;
• - Minimum sizes of apartments: the current rules require for the majority of apartments within a scheme to exceed minimum size by 10%. The new guidelines reduce this requirement from the majority to a minimum of 25% of apartments;
• - Dual aspect ratios: the current guidelines require at least 33% dual aspect units in urban locations and 50% in suburban locations to be dual aspect – meaning it has windows on at least two external walls. The new guidelines create a single standard of 25%.

While there are changes proposed to community facilities, like garden spaces, it is understood that Browne is to stress to Cabinet colleagues that there will be no downgrading to fire standards, accessibility standards or key environmental standards in the new apartment blocks.

This also refers to private open space rules for apartments, with no changes to the recommended sizes of balconies and terraces proposed in the minister’s measures.

Opposition reaction

Sinn Féin spokesperson on Housing, Eoin Ó Broin, has said that Minister James Browne’s plan to reduce minimum apartment sizes is a copy-and-paste of Fine Gael housing policy.

He said that reintroducing such a measure would see the same results: No increase in the supply of housing, renters condemned to live in small and dark apartments, and a dramatic increase in Judicial Reviews, further delaying the construction and delivery of homes.

“Reducing minimum apartment sizes means renters paying higher rents for smaller and darker apartments, and does nothing to increase the supply of housing or reduce the cost of rent.

“In fact, as we have seen before, it will increase the value of land and push up construction costs. Worst of all, such proposals will lead to a dramatic increase in Judicial Reviews, delaying even further the delivery of homes.

The Housing Minister’s big idea to increase housing supply is to dust off housing policies implemented by his predecessors that have demonstrably failed, according to Social Democrats housing spokesperson Rory Hearne said that Browne was “repeating the mistakes of the past” and that today’s measures were “doomed to fail”.

Accusing the minister of turning apartments so that they become “glorified shoeboxes”, Hearne said it echoes moves made by previous housing chiefs over the past decade.

The Dublin North-West TD pointed to Housing Minister Alan Kelly slashing apartment sizes in 2015 and to Eoghan Murphy doing similar in three years later.

“Continually reducing apartment sizes, and slashing guidelines, will do one thing – increase developer profits. It will not bring down the cost of housing and it will not encourage more individuals and families to live in apartments,” Hearne said.

Labour Party councillor on Dublin City Council Darragh Moriarty said he was seeking immediate clarity on the implications of these guidelines for the local authority, as they risked overriding critical city-wide development plans.

Moriarty, who chairs the council’s Community, Gaeilge, Sport, Arts and Culture Committee, said that any plans to “gut mandatory minimum requirements for vital community and cultural spaces” needed to be examined.

“The City Development Plan obliges developers of sites that are 10,000 sqm or larger to include a minimum of 5% community or cultural space,” the South West Inner City representative said.

Moriarty said these measures are crucial artists places where they can afford to live and work in Dublin, but said the government is now “injecting yet more uncertainty into the delivery of vitally-needed” housing and community infrastructure.