Minister for Housing James Browne has issued new guidelines on building apartments which will see changes to minimum sizes, will allow for the reduced provision of private open spaces and will preclude local authorities from requiring communal, community and cultural facilities as mandatory for individual apartment schemes.
Issuing the guidelines, the minister said Government was "taking decisive action, without compromising on any essential regulations, to ensure apartments are viable to build".
"We are acting in response to a housing crisis," he said.
"There are blockages to apartment building in the regulations we have, we can see that in the slow down in our much-needed pipeline of apartments."
Mr Browne said that changes "compare favourably with European norms" and "will likely result in some cases in an average of €50k and up to €100k cost reduction per unit".
He said that the supply of apartments was critical to meeting housing needed and that these changes would "get apartment building moving ... without compromising on disability, fire regulations, or environmental requirements".
The new 'Planning Design Standards for Apartments, Guidelines for Planning Authorities (2025)' set out revised standards for apartment development in relation to matters including apartment mix, internal space standards for different types of apartments, dual aspect ratios, floor to ceiling heights, stair/lift core ratios, storage spaces and amenity spaces - including balconies/patios.
Under the new guidelines, the minimum size for a studio apartment will be reduced from 37sqm to 32sqm.
Developers can now include more small two-bedroom apartments, which have one double and one single room.
Under previous guidelines, the number of these apartments allowed in any development was limited to 10%, but that limit has now been removed.
A new category of three-bedroom apartment has also been introduced in these new guidelines, one which has one double and two single rooms.
The minimum size for these smaller three-bedroom apartments is 76 square meters, while the minimum size for a three-bedroom apartment with two double rooms and one single remains 90sqm.
According to figures provided by the Department of Housing, the minimum sizes for Irish studio one-bed apartments are smaller than those in the UK, but they are bigger here for two and three-bed apartments.
These are minimum sizes, and apartments can be bigger, but the Department has also relaxed minimum requirements around this.
The previous guidelines required 51% or more of the apartments within a scheme to exceed the minimum size by 10%.
Under the guidelines just 25% need to do this.
The minimum number of apartments that need to have dual aspect windows within a complex has also been also reduced.
Under the 2023 guidelines, 33% of apartments in a complex in an urban location needed to be dual aspect, and it went to 50% for schemes in suburban locations.
The new guidelines create a single lower standard of 25%.
Planning authorities may now accept a reduced provision of private open spaces such as balconies ", in certain circumstances where their value would be negligible."
The new guidelines mean that "Communal, Community and Cultural Facilities" will not be required as mandatory for individual apartment schemes.
A department spokesperson said that these effectively amounted to an additional levy.
But the spokesperson said that communal open space requirements would remain.
Last night, Dublin City Council passed an emergency motion accusing central Government of "overreach" and "gutting" its provision for community and cultural spaces in large scale apartment complexes.
Under the 2022-2028 Dublin City Development Plan, apartment complexes that are built in Strategic Development Regeneration Areas and those of 10,000 square meters or more have to give 5% of their space to cultural or community uses.
Speaking on his way into Cabinet, Mr Browne said the Government supported "cultural spaces, but not in this manner".
"We want to do both, we encourage both, but this is not the way to do it, because ultimately we're in a housing crisis I'm treating as a housing emergency," Mr Browne said.
However under the new guidelines the need for these communal, community and cultural facilities cannot be required as mandatory for individual apartment schemes.
Green Party Councillor Claire Byrne, who with Labour's Darragh Moriarty tabled last night's emergency motion, said the minister's plan was a "vicious attack on local government and our city development plan processes".
