New apartment guidelines criticised by Kildare public representative
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MINISTER for Housing, James Browne, recently issued new guidelines for the building of apartments across the country, which will affect minimum sizes allowed in construction, will allow for reduced areas of open space and will reduce the level of mandatory community facilities.
The government’s latest plan to increase housing supply is a case of rolling back basic standards and hoping no one notices, according to Social Democrats councillor for Kildare, Chris Pender.
“The minister signed off on new apartment guidelines that will see homes built with less space, less light, and no requirement for private outdoor areas. These changes are being spun as innovation but they’re nothing new.
“In fact, we’ve seen this approach fail again and again. In 2015, Alan Kelly reduced studio sizes to 40 square metres. In 2018, Eoghan Murphy reduced them further to 37 square metres. Now, in 2025, we’re told 32 square metres will somehow solve the crisis. It won’t. It will fail — again,” said cllr Pender.
The new standards reduce dual-aspect requirements to just 25 per cent, scrap any need for 3-bed units in private schemes, allow half of all apartments to be built without balconies or terraces, and reduce the number of homes that must exceed the minimum size. Local authorities, meanwhile, have been stripped of the power to push for better.
“Call this what it is a developer-friendly deregulation plan dressed up as a housing solution. These are not homes, they’re policy failures waiting to happen,” said cllr Pender.
“This is not about affordability. It’s not about community. And it’s certainly not about dignity. It’s about making homes smaller, faster, and more profitable and telling people to be grateful for it.
“We were told by the Housing Commission that we need a radical reset of housing policy. What we’ve got instead is a minister stuck in the past repeating the same broken policies that got us here in the first place.
“From lifting rent caps to now cutting housing standards, this government is making our housing system more expensive, more precarious, and more disconnected from the people who actually live in it."
