Planning targets for more than 61,000 potential homes have been removed from local authority development plans in the Dublin region and adjoining counties over the past three years.
That is according to an analysis of existing county plans by James Benson, Director of Strategic Delivery and Planning with builders Cairn Homes.
The analysis was part of a presentation delivered to the Dublin Economics Workshop today, at its annual conference in Wexford.
It showed targets for homes in zoned land in the greater Dublin and mid-East region amounted to 192,988 units under older local authority development plans.
Following Housing Need and Demand Assessments (HNDA), the targets have been reduced to 131,579.
Cairn Homes has made applications for judicial reviews of the county plans of both Kildare and Wicklow county councils, based on downward revisions in the number of housing units planned in both counties.
Mr Benson said Cairn was supportive of many of the initiatives taken by the Government to increase housing output and to support affordability for buyers.
The downward revisions to housing targets were made in various county development plans over the years since 2020, based on 2016 Census data.
There is currently a review of the National Planning Framework under way, which will examine how changes in population growth since then, which has been higher than expected, may change those plans.
Also speaking today was Claragh Mulhern, a senior planning advisor with the Department of Housing.
Ms Mulhern said the planning system has an in-built review mechanism and it needs to be evidence-based and that this work is under way.
She also said that the system of planning is to cater for demand out to 2040 and cannot just be based on the current situation.
Robert Sweeney from the think-tank TASC identified fragmented land ownership as a significant barrier to urban regeneration projects based on the results of a series of in-depth interviews with private sector land traders and local authority officials.
