Brian Stanley challenges tiny apartment rules and student rent gaps

Thanks for your luck. I have four questions, Minister. Firstly, let me just welcome the single stage approval. That's a welcome development and a lot of us have been calling for that here for years. And the measure to identify urban development zones. I welcome that. That's the easy bit. So can you just turn to the apartments for a second? Have you ever lived in an apartment that's 32 square metres? No, I haven't. I've lived in a house that was 56 square metres, two-bedroomed house, and had a small backyard and a very small front garden, right? And it was daylight. I mean, 32 square metres is absolutely tiny, and to reduce the amount of light going into it, you know, during the Celtic Tiger, we lost sight of quality of life. And your government was in power during that time, and there was no focus put on quality of life. And are we going through the same thing again? And the justification for it is that, oh, sure, the apartments are not being built and the developers are walking away. But if you look at the number of rental units, the number of rental units between March, between June 23 and March 24, increased by 8%. Increased by over 16,000. So the figures don't seem to stack up, you know, in terms of that. So the question I want to ask you is in relation to that particular piece, in relation to that issue, has your department sought or have you analysed, done research on the profits of companies that are building them? In other words, developers. Are the developers losing money? Are they making money? You know, are they all popularised? Or is this just the CIF coming in looking for more money? That's the first question I want to ask you. The second question I have is in relation to the students. The recent measure that was announced regarding rents. OK, some of it's OK in that, you know, it could provide some certainty. The problem is with change in tenancies. That's the piece you forgot about. When tenancies are changing, you know, the price of the rent of that unit can be increased significantly. And that's the measure, and you and I know, and everybody else here in this room knows, that tenancies in the private rented sector change very quick. Unfortunately, and if you take, that's apart from students, but when you look at students, nine months, you know, they're all out again, they all have to go back in September and try and, you know, acquire another unit, another apartment to rent. You know, can you give a guarantee that you will bring in some measure, some measure to protect students, because they are, well, many people have been forgotten about. The students have definitely been forgotten about. The design and layout, Minister Cummins has gone out, he assured me in the chamber, in the Dáil Chamber, that, and I've been raising this, and you've heard me raising it, and Dara O'Brien raised it with him as well. I think I've got some grey hairs on my head raising it with him, about the need for, and the Secretary General of your department, Graeme Dial at the Public Accounts Committee, the need for copy and paste plans. If there's a good design in Wexford, right, it's okay to build them in Leish, as affordable or as social housing. That's how it was done before, right? And there's up to 15% of the cost being added on for the cost of architects. That's what senior staff will tell you in the local authorities. So let's reduce the cost, but also speed up, and if you want to provide anything quick, I don't mean in a shambolic way. Anybody who ever does anything to make anything, including housing, will tell you, you must produce, right? That's what Karen is home and all them are doing. They might change the look of the porch, but they're basically the same unit, and you need to do the same thing. But the City and County Manager Association, when they were in here, they contradicted Minister Cummins. They said it's not being used, but Minister Cummins assured me it was being used. And the last question I have is in relation to the, in relation to over the shop. You know, over the shop is going to be very hard to do, because in a lot of cases, because soundproofing is wooden floors. You know, you mentioned it already, stairs are pulled out, and fire risks. There's a real fire risk in it. I thought them buildings were three storey old buildings. You know, they're a tinderbox. And a lot of them are beyond repair or difficult to repair. And what I'm saying to you is a lot of those have large back gardens. And instead of trying to, instead of trying to turn these into something modern, you know, a lot of them need to be demolished. And the back garden utilised to be in a new small street of maybe six or eight or nine houses. A lot of them have over an acre behind them. You know, so instead of trying to, you know, modernise something that's basically a pile of rubble, let's, you know, why aren't we trying to create new streets to get people, like, living, living in the centre of towns? There are my four questions, Minister. Thank you very much, Deputy. In relation to the single-stage process, I do welcome your welcome, Fern, and I know you've raised it, I think, endless amounts of times in the Dáil, and so you have championed a long time. What we've done alongside that is actually, with the Department of Housing, a housing manual made it mandatory for local authorities to use those designs that will then standardise designs. So, as you will know, and you... Standardise plans, though, Minister, not just designs. Because, Graeme, they'll just keep repeating that to me. You know, we need standardised plans, copy and paste. And give the architect royalties for it, for using their plan each time. Yeah, so the plans that we've designed, if you like, in the Department of Housing, it is now mandatory for local authorities to use those. So I, to deliver housing on scale the way you did it in the past, you're 100% right. We need to see a local authority in Leish and Wexford and Donegal that they are using similar plans for houses. That will also help MMC, Modern Metals of Construction, so those companies know what they are now designing for, it's not the vernacular for every local authority, and there will be consistency there. And I would hope the private industry would actually copy these as well, so they will, in terms of going in for planning permission, because these are really high specification and high standards. In relation to apartments, we only have to look at the numbers, we've seen a collapse in the delivery of apartments. The profit margins of the companies, they're registered companies, they're registered with CRO. So we have almost 50,000 apartments not being commenced, if you like. Are the developers going bankrupt? They're losing money? They're not building though, Deputy. They're not building. If there was profit there, they would be building. So they don't need to go bankrupt not to build, as proof that you're not going to make a profit. So that's why we're making a lot of decisions we've been making, to get apartment delivery moving. We're seeing a collapse in delivery of apartments, in particular in Dublin City. We need to get them delivered, so we do, and that's why we've been making a lot of decisions we've been making. In relation to student accommodation, I'm working with Minister James, in terms of specified student accommodation that's built, purpose-built student accommodation, and to see what measures may need to be put in there. But in terms of the wider rental sector, there's no protections in place for any specific group of people. I'm not aware of it, everything we've done in the history of the state, and I don't intend to do it here either, because you will create an impossible, complex situation that you simply could not oversee and check. The amount of students you have in this accommodation in this country is quite high, understandably so. But you also have nurses, you have guards who move around, doctors, you have a lot of people who move around in this country. And what we did here is we made the decisions that we believe will actually get delivery. Because all of these problems we have, whether it's homeless numbers, whether it's high rents, or whether it's high cost of being able to buy a home, is as a result of a lack of supply. Supply, supply, supply, supply.