The residential housing targets set out in the National Planning Framework will exacerbate the housing crisis, according to a Residential Land Supply Study 2022 by Savills Ireland.
The property advisor said housing targets and guidelines are fundamentally flawed.
It said four key elements of the plan are impeding the successful rollout of a residential housing development strategy that has the capacity to deliver sufficient homes in the right locations.
The study shows that the reduction in the supply of zoned residential land, a focus on capping rather than boosting housing supply, an attempt to divert growth away from Dublin, aspirational rather than realistic timelines and a rigidity around development sites are the primary impediments that flow from the National Planning Framework as currently implemented.
John Ring, Director of Research at Savills Ireland, said this must be assessed and altered if we are to make any headway into addressing the housing crisis.
Mr Ring said the focus on compact urban development at the heart of this strategy "is a laudable and necessary objective if we are to achieve our climate change objectives, whilst also avoiding the legacy of urban sprawl that characterised the Celtic Tiger period".
"However, in the midst of a housing crisis, we must ensure that our goals are achievable rather than aspirational," he added.
Savills contend that the overall emphasis of the National Planning Framework is on capping, rather than boosting housing supply.
Mr Ring said the focus should be on ensuring that minimum targets are met rather than maximums exceeded. "We need a floor rather than a ceiling for housing delivery.
"After a lost decade of housing delivery, we are producing just four homes per 1,000 people in Dublin, less than half of the nine per 1,000 recorded going back 25 years ago and just a quarter of the output of 2006," he said.
"Similarly, in the Greater Dublin Area, we are producing seven homes per 1,000 compared to 12 per 1,000 people in 1996 and 23 in 2006. We need to implement stretch targets at this time to reflect the urgency of the situation, rather than limiting our ambitions to goals that are likely to fail".
Savills research reveals that there has been a large reduction of zoned residential land available for development within the Greater Dublin Area (Dublin, Meath, Kildare and Wicklow), which would have had the capacity to accommodate over 100,000 units, or the equivalent of ten years supply.
Meanwhile, material and labour shortages continue to drive up the cost of construction, while borrowing costs are also increasing steeply.
"The culmination of these considerations impacts the viability of schemes and can ultimately drive-up house price until they are sufficient to cover the development costs, thus further degrading buyer affordability at a time when economic volatility is high," the estate agents said.
