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50 March/April 2022
Over 60 per cent of households in County Galway,
for example, were one-o houses, the highest in the
country. Roscommon (56%) and Leitrim (52%) weren’t
far behind.
After 2016 there was an improvement as more
apartments were built.
5481, 5622 and 5292 one-o houses were built
in 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021 respectively –
representing respecivel 19%, 14%, 12% and 23%
of the total dwellings including apartments built and
adding more than 1% to the stock of one-o houses
annually.
T
here were , one-o houses at the
time of the last census in , representin
per cent of all occupied dwellins in the
State.
Almost 40 per cent of all homes
constructed between 2011 and 2016 were one-
o houses (detached houses with individual
sewerage systems), suggesting no lessons had been
learnt. Despite the pretence of diculty obtaining
permissions, remarkably in 17 counties one-o
housing comprised over half of all dwellings built
since 2011.
If you don’t plan to optimise the social,
environmental and economic effects of your
policies, quality of life suffers and everyone pays
By Suzie Mélange
OPINION
One-off Housing
fritters €5.6bn
(on Broadband provision)
March/April 2022 51
5481, 5622 and 5292 one-off houses were built in 2018,
2019, 2020 and 2021 respectively –19%, 14%, 12% and
23% of the total dwellings built and adding more than 1%
to the stock of one-off houses annually.
Reflecting the Covid-driven increase in one-o-
house building (which is less regulated than say
apartment building), in December 2021 Property
Industry Ireland (PII), an Ibec front, said “Given
the National Planning Framework and the Climate
Action Plan objective of more compact living it is
concerning to see the growth in permission for one-o
housing relative to multi-development housing and
apartments”.
Despite a Green component the Programme for
Government is silent on one-o housing. Though
individual Green Party members are typically
concerned about planning, its elected members don’t
like to be seen to say No. They’re happy to champion
a ‘Town Centre first’ policy but would sooner manage
a McDonald’s than oppose one-o housing or even
sprawl, in case someone scream ‘God gave me the
land’ or ‘Housing Crisis’ at them. The media and
public have entirely failed to register that for the
modern Green TD planning is very yesterday.
The 2018 National Planning Framework guides the
whole framework. Those oxymorons are important –
it is mostly flouted and intended to be flouted, on one-
o housing. Ocials pontificate about planning while
one-o housing builders get on with the business of
breaching the policy because of the Third Secret of
Fatima of Irish Planning: local authorities don’t have
to follow their own plans.
In a part-EU-law-driven departure from the 2005
Rural Housing Guidelines, the NPF mooted the
concept of “demonstrable economic need” as an
alternative to the current“local housing need” as
the relevant s criterion for one-o rural housing in
the commuter hinterlands of all cities and towns.
Meanwhile the actual guidelines promised for January
2021 have been delayed because the Greens are too
embarrassed to face up to another climbdown, for
a while. Junior (anti-)Planning Minister Fine Gael’s
Peter Burke is plotting more of the same.
Remember the more stu is mooted the more the
Greens can avoid taking any responsibility for what is
actually happening.
Of course the problems with one-o housing
are long-documented and long-ignored. They are
rooted in the fact that non-planning is unsustainable
i.e. doesn’t balance economic with social and
environmental imperatives (though of course all of
these agendas are swept aside to meet the housing
deficit, itself caused by long-term deference to the
market).
The fabulous thing about one-o housing for the
nouveau-peasant anti-ideologues is that it is shit on
all of these agendas, perhaps most of all economic.
The social problems of isolation and de-energised
towns and villages; and the environmental problems
of water pollution and car-pollution dependency are
very serious.
But economically one-o housing is extravagant.
Dense communities serve society well as they can
be served with public transport and good facilities
and infrastructure. They benefit from something that
economists rate highly – economies of scale. For
example a terraced community has fewer walls, can
be more easily heated and of course is more easily
served by postal, electricity, gas, water, waste and
other services. And by broadband.
All the while we have a National Broadband Plan
(NBP) which, according to Eoin Burke-Kennedy writing
in the Irish Times “promises what no country on the
planet has done – to connect a scattergram of remote
cottages and out-of-the-way holiday homes, to a
state-of-the-art broadband network, bypassing 50
years of bad or zero planning. The cost? A whopping
€5½ billion, including a €2.6 billion State subsidy
and without ownership of the end product”.
He notes that the rollout has been “mired in delays
and diculties to do with the complex terrain and
dilapidated condition of existing infrastructure –
poles and ducts”.
This was all predictable. “Other countries have made
similar promises but for example Boris Johnson’s
Conservative party recently ditched its £5 billion
election manifesto pledge to give all homes across
the UK superfast broadband by 2025. Leinster House,
underpinned by a strong rural lobby, has written a
blank cheque to fix the problem. Due diligence and
cost-benefit analysis were shoved to one side”.
The Department of Public Expenditure said
precisely this in a 2019 letter to the Minister for
Finance, recommending against the plan on grounds
of aordability, risk and value for money.
When you don’t plan – when you ignore the social,
economic and environmental costs of major policies,
everyone loses.
