Local resistance to development projects of all types is empowered in Ireland through the planning system which has, since the 1963 Planning and Development Act, placed local authorities in the central role as gate-keepers in decisions about land use.

Planning applications for any permanent structure must be made in the first instance to the designated planning authority, in practice the county or city council. There are 31 of these, largely free of central direction as to policy.

In Dublin and the main provincial cities, Nimbyism emerged as a potent political force in the 1970s.

Not coincidentally, the price of new houses in Dublin first began to diverge from levels elsewhere around this time, as has been documented by Ronan Lyons and his colleagues at the Department of Economics in Trinity College.

Prior to about 1975, a new house on the outskirts of the capital city cost little more than was the typical price in the provinces.

Population growth was slow in these years, and land suitable for suburban development was plentiful around the edges of Dublin.

Full impact

Site costs were modest and planning delays inconsequential. By the 1990s, the full impact of the 1963 legislation had become painfully visible, even though sites suitable for residential construction were available close to the city’s pre-existing boundaries.

Instead, the city set sail for the midlands as local authorities declined adequate zoning, failed to service sites already zoned and granted planning permissions with material restrictions which impaired their commercial viability for the developer.

Appeals to An Bord Pleanála against permissions actually granted became more common and many succeeded, often with the support of local councillors and TDs in thrall to the residents’ associations.

More recently objectors who fail to stop a proposal at the second fence, An Bord Pleanála, can try again at the High Court and the steeplechase course has in the last few years been extended to a fourth fence at the European Court.

Not surprisingly, developers have become discouraged, and housing in Dublin has become prohibitively expensive.

The perception that the population of Dublin is booming as rural Ireland depopulates is simply wrong – the Census figures show that the fastest growing counties in Ireland have been Kildare and Meath, with rapid growth also in various distant towns around Leinster.

Urban sprawl

Dublin has become a low-density urban sprawl, rather like a sunbelt city in the southern or western USA, without the sunshine. The same pattern, on a smaller scale, is evident around Cork and the other provincial cities.

One consequence is the affordability crisis for younger city residents, with reports of pay demands for lower-paid staff unable to work in Dublin without impossible commutes.

The extent of the crisis has stimulated numerous brainwave ‘solutions’, including the abandonment of the sea-port of Dublin, by a distance the country’s largest, and the construction of a new facility at an unidentified location elsewhere on the east coast. No estimate of costs has even been attempted.

The master of the National Maternity Hospital, for whose replacement at St Vincent’s no definitive cost estimate is available either, has proposed that lower-paid staff in Dublin should be paid extra to offset the extravagant accommodation costs they face.

All staff throughout the country, where there have never been regional pay differentials in public or private employments, would doubtless seek parity.

Superior solution

A more reasoned approach has come from the businessman Paschal Taggart, who feels that the superior solution is to build more residential units, for sale or for rent, on under-utilised sites close to the city.

He notes that Dublin has a number of very large public parks and questions whether they need to be so big.

Some of them (the Phoenix Park for example, or St Annes on the city’s north-side) contain dozens of football pitches, waterlogged and unavailable for use through the mid-winter months.

A small number of covered air-domes with all-weather surfaces, adequate for amateur and under-age teams, could host 35 or 40 games per week and are common around northern Europe, and cost no more than €1 million each.

They would free up space, currently waterlogged and wasted, for much-needed housing.

Paschal Taggart’s preference is that the new housing be reserved for certain categories of workers, but this does not really matter – what the city needs is more affordable housing, to buy or to rent, across the market.

Housing minister Darragh O’Brien has objected to lower house price targets, proposed by Sinn Féin’s leader Mary Lou McDonald, since lower prices would be, well, lower. There could be negative equity for recent purchasers.

Sinn Féin is not entirely credible either – McDonald was a prominent objector to the construction of 1,600 rental units at the Clonliffe site in her constituency, just beside Croke Park and walking distance to the city centre.

There will be no omelette without breaking eggs.