Planning and Development (Amendment) Bill 2026: Committee and Remaining Stages Dail Éireann — 2026-07-08 ============================================================ Eoin Ó Broin (SF), Dublin Mid-West The Minister of State either does not understand the arguments we are putting forward or is wilfully ignoring them. Deputy Sheehan's point on the erosion of savings is a really important one. The Minister grossly inflated the savings. He alleged that there could be savings of €100,000 per unit. All of the industry, including Paul Mitchell from Mitchell McDermott, quickly came out publicly and said that was nonsense. The maximum saving from the design standards, according to reputable industry figures, is in the region of €30,000. Of course when you add in the VAT reduction, that is where the figure of €60,000 comes from. What has happened with apartments since these changes were announced? They have been in the ether now for a year. We are not seeing a dramatic increase in planning applications or grants for apartments, according to the data on the websites of the Department and the CSO. We are not seeing a significant increase in commencements or completions, particularly in the first quarter of this year. It is really interesting that new apartment inflation is running at almost double the level of new property inflation. It started off at about 6% this time last year, ratcheted up to 9.2% and then 9.4% in March and April, and levelled off in May at 8%. The Minister of State said that these measures would not just bring down the cost of delivery but bring down the cost of purchasing or renting as well. If they have had any effect at all - it is too early to say - all they have done is further inflated the market. That is before gifting developers another €20,000 to €30,000 in a VAT reduction that the apartments that were under construction last year, this year and early next year clearly did not need. They were already viable. To be clear, what the Minister of State is doing here - the Royal Institute of Architects made this point when the announcement was made last year, and the Irish Planning Institute made similar points - is facilitating bad development and substandard development. If these developments end up getting built - the Minister of State's view is that if one gets built, it is a success - their success will be determined by the quality of the homes and communities we provide for working people. If they are of poor quality and inferior to what we have today, that is definitely not success for these people, about whom I am ultimately concerned. I accept there is a viability problem; I think there are far better ways of addressing it. We should not force renters who will live in smaller, darker, more expensive apartments to pay the cost of that. That is a debate for another day. I really think the Minister of State has got this one badly wrong. I am not even convinced he fully understands how much he has gotten this badly wrong. I make no apology for opposing these sections. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-07-08/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:07+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-07-08