Architects ‘hypocritical’ on apartment sizes – Alan Kelly

Minister for the Environment Alan Kelly has accused the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland (RIAI) of being "hypocritical" and "wrong" in its claims over the viability of new apartment-size regulations.

RIAI vice-president and housing spokesman John O’Mahony earlier this week said it was “not possible” to design an apartment within the minimum sizes introduced last month, because the smallest permissible rooms would not fit inside.

Property industry representatives and planners subsequently said they had asked for tests to be carried out on the sizes to demonstrate their viability before the publication of the Planning Guidelines on Design Standards for New Apartments last December.

Disingenuous and strange

Mr Kelly said on Tuesday he was “flummoxed” by the comments. “I found it disingenuous and I found it very, very strange given the fact that some of the people who are commentating – if you check out their work – they have designed apartments that were less than the standards they are now complaining about.”

The Dublin City Development Plan had set the minimum size of one-bed apartments at 55sq m, two-bed apartments at 90sq m and three-bed apartments at 100sq m.

The Department of Environment standards, which became mandatory in December, set minimum one-bed apartments at 45sq m, two-bed apartments at 73sq m and three-bed apartments at 90sq m, but the component parts, ie the rooms, remain the same as with the council sizes.

Mr O’Mahony said these apartments cannot physically be built. “Once all requirements around room sizes and storage are satisfied, the true ‘practical’ minimum areas of apartments are circa 49sq m for one-bed, circa 80sq m for a two-bed, and circa 97sq m for a three-bed.”

The claims the room sizes would not fit into the apartments, were “not true”, Mr Kelly said.

“They obviously are disingenuously putting a discourse out there that is completely inaccurate and wrong - it’s as simple as that.”

Positive light

The chairman of the Government's Housing Agency, Conor Skeehan, said on Tuesday if there were anomalies with the standards they should be seen in a positive light.

“People are now saying the minimum size is going to be bigger than the minimum. It’s not a bad situation to be where we’re in a country where the basic size of apartments is going to be bigger than the minimum.”

A 45sq m home was “not that big if you have to live in it”, Mr Skeehan said. “Bigger than 45 can only be better, and that’s what this is showing – that we’re going to end up with more generous apartments.”

Mr Skeehan offered to convene a workshop of stakeholders to determine whether the new sizes would work.

The department’s senior planner, Niall Cussen, said the minimum sizes were needed to allow flexibility to deal with “funny corners” or irregularly shaped sites, but would not be widely used.