The High Court is to hear a legal challenge in December to the Minister for Housing’s new apartment planning standards.
Mr Justice Richard Humphreys gave permission on Monday to several councillors and a journalist to bring the case against the guidelines, which allowed an increase in the number of studio apartments developers could put in a project as well as other changes aimed at bridging a “viability gap” the Government said had stymied apartment building.
The judge granted an expedited hearing date for the case, listing it for early December.
The challenge against the guidelines – issued in July by Housing Minister James Browne – has been taken by Labour’s Darragh Moriarty, the Green Party’s David Healy and Dan Boyle, independent councillor Pádraig McEvoy and former Irish Times environment editor Frank McDonald.
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They are seeking several orders, including one quashing the minister’s apartment guidelines.
In their case they say the Minister breached legislation by failing to carry out a strategic environmental assessment of the guidelines.
The new guidelines state the minimum size for a studio apartment is 32sq m. This is a reduction on previous guidelines, when the minimum was set at 37sq m.
David Browne SC, for the Minister, told the court his side intended to defend the action robustly.
He said the case was a matter of “profound concern” for the Minister. He said the action, in the context of a housing crisis, jeopardised the delivery of apartments in the foreseeable future.
Tom Flynn SC, for the applicants, said his side considered the guidelines to be important and he said it was important their legality be determined quickly.
Mr Justice Humphreys granted the expedited hearing sought by Mr Browne and unopposed by Mr Flynn.
In a statement to the court, Cllr Moriarty said the guidelines were issued with “zero engagement or consultation” with local authorities and without environmental reports. This, Mr Moriarty said, “constituted a gross undermining of the role of local government and of local democracy itself”.
Mr Moriarty said the guidelines would lead to darker and more cramped apartments with less storage space.
Cllr McEvoy, in his statement, said the guidelines were “inconsistent with Ireland’s social equity goals, climate commitments” and the “need for resilient, liveable communities”.
In his affidavit, Mr McDonald said he believes the guidelines “conjure up a dystopian future for apartment dwellers in Ireland’s urban centres”.
He said the new guidelines would “ensure” that build-to-rent developers would construct apartment blocks consisting solely of studio apartments for single people, with floor areas “as minuscule as 32sq m accessed from long corridors redolent of budget hotels, with a minimal number of lifts and other amenities”.
Mr McDonald submitted that he has significant experience living in apartments, having spent 27 years at a Temple Bar “duplex penthouse”, before moving to a “spacious” new apartment in Blackrock in 2022.
“I could spend my time reading novels and drinking champagne on our planted terrace − resting on my laurels, in effect," he said.
He continued: “But I firmly believe that those of us who are older have betrayed the younger generation in this State by failing to ensure that they have access to affordable housing, whether to buy or rent, and that their plight will be aggravated by the dystopian future set out for them by the new apartment design standards [...] which effectively guarantee that they will have no option but to pay dearly for Lilliputian living spaces in glorified 21st century tenements, most likely owned by private equity funds or other institutional investors from overseas.”
