Smaller apartments are filling the Digital Hub, and the courts have yet to rule on the standards
This is an editorial from BPS Planning, issued for discussion only.
Within a week of the Government issuing its Design Standards for Apartments as a national planning statement, the first large public scheme to be reshaped by them has appeared. The Land Development Agency's revised plans for the Digital Hub lands off Thomas Street in Dublin 8 now show 716 apartments, up from the 550 proposed in 2022. One extra storey accounts for part of the increase. Most of it comes from smaller homes.
On its face this is the new policy doing exactly what it was designed to do. The standards allow the smallest apartment, a studio, to fall from 37 to 32 square metres, relax the requirements on dual aspect, ceiling heights, storage and private open space, and stop planning authorities from requiring set proportions of larger units. On a constrained, publicly owned inner-city site well served by public transport and close to jobs and colleges, more homes from the same land is a reasonable ambition. The LDA points out that more than a quarter of the apartments will still exceed the minimum sizes, and the scheme brings 14 buildings on Thomas Street back into use, along with industrial heritage such as Vat House 7 and the Watling Warehouse. That is real regeneration on a street that has waited a long time for it.
But the timing deserves attention. The same standards were issued last year as ministerial guidelines, and a challenge to them led the Irish courts to refer questions to the Court of Justice of the European Union. That ruling is still awaited. The Minister chose to put the standards on the footing of a national planning statement under the new planning legislation rather than wait for it. Whatever the merits of the choice, the practical result is that schemes are now being designed, and soon decided, on standards whose legal basis has not been fully tested.
For applicants this matters a great deal. A large application takes months of design, environmental work and consultation, and a permission takes a year or more to lead to a start on site. The Digital Hub scheme is not due to begin construction until 2028. If the European ruling unsettles the standards, the exposure falls on every permission that depends on them, and on the planning authorities and the Commission that applied them. Developers will price that risk, and lenders will ask about it. It would be an unhappy outcome if a measure meant to speed up delivery instead invited a new round of judicial review.
There is also the question of what is being built. The case for smaller units rests on the large number of one and two-person households and on viability, and both arguments have force. Yet a city that builds mainly studios and one-bedroom homes in its core risks repeating an old mistake: inner-city neighbourhoods that people pass through rather than settle in. Dublin 8 is a long-established community of families. The scheme includes only a small number of three-bedroom homes, and those are in the refurbished buildings along Thomas Street. The just-approved second phase at St Teresa's Gardens nearby, with its own-door duplexes, shows that a mix of homes remains achievable on public land.
The counter-argument is serious and should be stated fairly. Households are waiting now. Construction costs are high, and every square metre counts against viability. Generous standards that add cost do not help someone renting a box room in a shared house. Smaller, well-designed homes in the right locations are better than homes that are never built, and the evidence from the pipeline is that too many permissions are not proceeding.
My view is that both things can be true. Compact apartments have a place in a well-served inner city, and the LDA's scheme has much to recommend it. However, the State's own housing delivery body should be setting the benchmark for quality, not simply testing the new minimums. The Commission, when it receives this application, should look closely at the mix of homes, the quality of daylight in single-aspect units, and the communal space that compensates for smaller private rooms. And the Government would do well to say plainly what it will do if the European ruling goes against it. Certainty is the one thing every applicant, council and community needs, and it is the one thing the current approach has not yet provided.
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