Zoned land with no utilities ‘won’t solve the housing crisis’

• Published date: 27 September 2024
• Publication title: Irish Times (Dublin, Ireland)

Three objectors put paid to that timeline, and the ultimate outcome of the appeal is still uncertain even after An Bord Pleanála recently gave it the green light. The builder’s chief lobbyist, the Construction Industry Federation (CIF), is not immune, it seems, to the vagaries of the planning system

Fitzpatrick, who took over from Tom Parlon as the head of the CIF last summer, is still enthusiastic about the project, but the uncertainty around timelines is a theme he returns to time and again when we sit down to talk about the challenges for the sector in delivering on multiple ambitious Government plans.

In the background lurk estimates on the number of homes the State needs to build every year simply to catch up with demand – figures that jump by thousands every few weeks – and the difficulty in funding that development in an environment where banks are still chastened by their recklessness in the Celtic Tiger years and institutional funders are finding Ireland an increasingly inhospitable place in which to try to do business.

Catching up has become the story of successive governments since the financial crash but the National Planning Framework, under which all county development plans are drawn up, was described a couple of years ago as “the flawed bible on which our entire planning system and population growth targets are based”.

Tetrarch Homes chief executive Michael McElligott said it was based on out-of-date numbers that would see actual population overshooting the projected 2040 target by more than 600,000 people – all of them needing homes that the county plans say do not need to be allowed for in planning.

Fitzpatrick says it is important that we put realistic targets on what the population might grow to, and view that plan as being “an enabler rather than a restrictor”.

“We should be providing for infrastructure to cater for the growth for the next 20-30 years, rather than for the next five to 10 years,” he says. “So we require a bit more ambition with regard to the scale of the infrastructure that’s required, and [must] ensure that the providers of the infrastructure are well-resourced to advance with forward planning of all those projects to get them shovel-ready.”

This is at the heart of the construction sector’s debate with the Government. Too much focus, they say, is placed on the amount of land zoned for housing, as though the only thing missing was a commitment by developers to get stuck in and build it.

“There is no point zoning lands if you don’t have the infrastructure servicing those lands,” Fitzpatrick notes. Without...