Darragh O'Brien

A legislative amendment approved by ministers will give further legislative effect to ministerial planning guidelines issued in May under section 28 of the Planning and Development Act 2000 (as amended).

The guidelines are aimed at ensuring new ‘own-door’ houses and duplex units in housing developments are not bulk-purchased by commercial institutional investors in a manner that causes the displacement of individual purchasers and/or social and affordable housing (including cost rental housing).

Housing strategies, which are prepared as part of a local authority’s development plan review process, consider and specify an area’s housing need requirements during a development plan’s lifetime.

Housing minister Darragh O’Brien said: “This proposed change is one of many measures in Housing for All that aims to increase access to home ownership.

“It will ensure that all local authorities, through their housing strategies, estimate and include the housing need for individual purchasers (as well as social and affordable housing) as part of the overall tenure split projected for the local authority area.”

The proposed amendment to the Planning and Development (Amendment) (Large-scale Residential Development) Bill 2021 will introduce the principle of home ownership as a specific tenure type within a local authority’s housing strategy, with particular regard to developments comprising houses and duplexes.

The proportion of home ownership will be calculated by each local authority using the housing need and demand assessment, which projects future need of housing by tenure type. Projections are based on incomes, house prices and rents, structural demand for housing, existing need and projections for how these indicators will evolve over the coming years.