Up to 70k homes caught in planning or the courts

Potentially 70,000 new homes are caught in the planning system and courts, says the Construction Industry Federation (CIF).

Conor O’Connell, the federation’s director of housing and planning, said a recent survey by the organisation found about 1,400 proposed developments were before the planning appeals board or the subject of judicial reviews.

“We have estimated that the total number could be 60,000 to 70,000 houses between An Bord Pleanála and judicial review,” he said.

Mr O’Connell said there could be “some duplication” between the courts and planning board, but stressed that margin for error was less than 10 per cent.

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He was speaking as the CIF debated key issues including planning bottlenecks, labour shortages and climate change at its annual conference in Croke Park on Thursday.

“We think 2024 could be a really good year for residential construction, but we really need to see An Bord Pleanála start determining that large number of housing applications,” Mr O’Connell said.

He acknowledged that the board had struggled with its own staff shortages, but noted that the Government has pledged it extra resources, while the number of actual board members had increased to 15 from two.

Builders are ready to begin work on those projects, according to Mr O’Connell, who stressed that planners had to move ease the bottleneck.

Around 70,000 homes have planning permission, but developers have yet to start working on them, the CIF director agreed.

However, he explained that these were mainly apartments in cities, including around 40,000 to 50,000 in Dublin, which are difficult to fund.

Several Government initiatives meant to ease those financial pressures are likely to have an impact next year, allowing work to begin on many of those projects, Mr O’Connell predicted.

He explained that many of the developments caught in the planning system were houses favoured by young families seeking their first home, who account for a significant proportion of demand.

Speaking at the conference, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar suggested converting empty offices for housing.

He noted that increased home working had cut the need for offices. “We have to look at changing their use, possibly for housing,” he said.

John Downey of professional firm, Downey Planning, agreed that this could work, but argued that commercial building owners who want to change use to residential should not have to seek planning permission. He pointed out that the UK allows this exemption.

The Taoiseach told the conference in Croke Park that more than 14,000 homes were built in the Republic in the first half of this year. “Four hundred to 500 people are buying their first home every week,” he said.

The Cabinet will publish the new planning and development bill next week, which the Taoiseach pledged would create “clarity, consistency and certainty”.

Paschal Donohoe, Minister for Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform, said that the Government would spend €12.8 million on infrastructure building next year, three to four times the budget it had seven to eight years ago.

Government has earmarked some of the tax surplus cash from recent years to ensure that it can continue to finance infrastructure building when the economy slows.

Mr Donohoe said Government would allocate an extra €2.25 billion from surpluses to speeding up key National Development Plan projects from 2024 to 2026.

Kevin Meaney, principal officer in Mr Donohoe’s department said recent reforms to the process for awarding State building tenders could up to a year off the time taken to award contracts.

Hubert Fitzpatrick, CIF director general stressed that the industry needed a “sustainable pipeline of projects” to give it the confidence to continue growing.

He said one of the key points of the conference was to ensure continued collaboration between “the public and private sectors, our agencies and our members”.