Ireland: Labour Councillor Darragh Moriarty has described BTR development in Dublin as a “race to the bottom”.
Councillor Moriarty, who represents most of the Dublin 8 area, was responding to concerns raised by the Office of the Planning Regulator, that its proposals to curtail the dominance of Build-to-Rent (BTR) were not in accordance with national planning guidelines as set out by the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage.
“Since Fine Gael’s Ministerial Guidelines came into effect in 2018, the saturation of Build-to-Rent has been destroying communities all over Dublin, including my own area of Dublin 8,” he said. “The dominance of BTR has been steadily rising since the guidelines were introduced, accounting for almost 82% of residential planning applications permitted or pending in 2020 in the DCC area.
“The homes delivered through these schemes exemplify the very worst of our failed approach to tackling our housing crisis – a race to the bottom in terms of standards, packing as many units as possible into developments with no storage space, no balconies and no regard for the people that will live in these homes,” added Moriarty.
Responding to concerns raised about the future long-term viability of BTR developments, the City Council proposed a series of measures, including a presumption against granting permission to BTR developments smaller than 100 units and a requirement that any scheme including BTR would have to include a minimum of 40 per cent of its units for the private sale market.
“We have to recognise that in raising its concerns, the Office of the Planning Regulator is just doing the job it was set up to do, i.e. to try ensure local authority development plans are in line with national policy,” Cllr. Moriarty said. “But when the national policy is so clearly and demonstrably getting it wrong, local authorities must call that out and do what is in the best interests of the people they serve.”
Ireland has already introduced a ban on planning consents for new coliving schemes.
