Government use of special powers to rezone large tracts of land would take power away from local councillors to push back against house building, an expert has said. 

Over the last week it has been decided that the Government will use special powers to rezone large tracts of land for building houses.

The focus of this policy is to get more people living closer to city and town centers.

This comes off the back of plans to relax regulations so that modular homes could be built in back gardens.

Builders at work on new A Rated 2,3 and 4 bedroomed homes. 11/01/2022 Photo: Eamonn Farrell/RollingNews.ie

On The Pat Kenny Show, Irish Independent Ireland Editor Fionnán Sheahan said these new powers would take the prospect of opposing councillors out of the mix.

“On a local level, when a housing development is going through the planning process, the fellas leading the charge tend to be the very councillors whose own parties are giving out about a housing crisis,” he said. 

“I mean, there's plenty of examples of that.

“There's a classic example out in South County Dublin, of a 500 unit apartment block and the two local Government councillors are the ones who are leading the charge against it.

“The point being put to me there is that councillors tend to be a law unto themselves.”

Housing market, © PA Wire/PA Images

Mr Sheahan said the plan to overrule councillors and use special powers to rezone lands is basically an “executive order”.

“The irony is, despite the fact we had the largest piece of legislation in the history of the Oireachtas passed only in the last 18 months with the new Planning Act, we're going back to the Planning Act 2000 here,” he said.

“Powers there that are used at the moment tend to be kind of inappropriate zoning of land, largely in rural areas where the planning regulator says, ‘Look, you shouldn't be really zoning that’, and the Minister can de-zone it.

“In this case, what's been looked at is using that power to identify large tracts of land that you can put several thousand houses upon.

“The logic is that you kind of can't rely upon local authorities to do this.”

A housing estate, © PA Wire/PA Images

Mr Sheahan said using these special powers will mean a step away from “piecemeal” housing.

“If you look at the numbers it will tell you a local authority has zoned enough land in their area to provide for housing needs into the future,” he said.

“But when you break it down, it tends to be piecemeal - it tends to be scattered around and mightn’t necessarily be near available roads, water and electricity services.

“So, what's been looked at here is particularly in the greater Dublin area, and Fingal specifically was was mentioned to me, looking at taking large tracts of land there and saying, ‘Right, we’ll zone that, get the services into it, and you can build large scale housing’.”

A housing development under construction, Carrigaline, County Cork. Image: David Creedon / Alamy Stock Photo

Mr Sheahan said the point of all of this is to look at the longer term.

“They're basically saying that within Dublin and the greater Dublin area, there's going to be a need for greater amounts of housing in the coming decade or the coming generation, and that therefore, you need to look at scale now,” he said.

“So it's kind of a shift in focus from the previous housing plan, which was about getting shovels in the ground now and showing a bit of activity and get stuff going, to take a more long term view.

“This type of zoning would see this land coming online in the next couple of years.”

The plan is to get away from urban sprawl and once off ribbon housing, Mr Sheahan said.

New houses under construction in Basingstoke, Hampshire, England, © PA Archive/PA Images