Sir, – The framing of the Central Bank’s finding that it is taking longer to build housing (“Building a home in Ireland takes twice as long as it did a decade ago”, Business, September 16th) as evidence of a “dysfunctional planning system” is extraordinary and difficult to reconcile with the report itself. Indeed, the report concludes that slightly elevated planning decision times for some categories of development amount to a matter of one or two months, “against the average construction phase taking a year longer”.
The Central Bank’s analysis shows that although planning decision times for larger schemes have increased somewhat, the increase is measured in months, not years. The report finds little change in planning timelines for one-off housing and notes that decision times for non-appealed scheme housing have fallen from earlier peaks.
By contrast, it identifies the most significant increase in housing delivery times as occurring after planning permission has been granted. The period between commencement and completion has roughly doubled across all housing types and is described as “the largest and most persistent increase over time”. The report points to a range of likely contributory factors, including labour shortages, utility connection delays, financing constraints, rising construction costs and site-level issues. It also highlights the persistent fact that approximately a quarter of permitted homes never commence construction at all.
If we are serious about increasing housing supply and speeding up infrastructure delivery, we need a more honest conversation than one that reduces almost every housing or infrastructure delay to a planning problem. Blaming planning for every shortfall may be a convenient shorthand, or even a dog whistle, but it is becoming an increasingly lazy substitute for understanding the real causes of delay and addressing them effectively. – Yours, etc,
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SEÁN O’LEARY,
Chief executive,
Irish Planning Institute,
Dublin 2.
