If councils rezone more land, will it really speed up house-building?

The Minister for Housing, Fianna Fáil TD James Browne, and the Taoiseach, Fianna Fáil TD Micheál Martin, both said recently that councils need to rezone more land so developers can build more homes.

“Councils will be instructed by the minister to rezone, to do their county development plans pronto, get more land available for housing,” said Martin, in an Irish Times podcast earlier this month.

“That is an important enabler for many, many builders out there,” he said.

Said Browne, also in an Irish Times interview: “I will be asking every local authority to reopen the development plans. Every local authority will have a need.”

“We know in certain parts of Ireland, in particular the east coast, we are running out of actual zoned land for people to build on,” he said.

But a lack of official data on how much land is zoned for homes and the long funnel between rezoning land and homes being built gives pause to the idea that this is a pressing part of the solution.

“I have not seen data to suggest that the shortage of zoned land is at the root of the shortfall of housing supply,” says Joseph Kilroy, head of policy and public affairs at the Chartered Institute of Building.

Architect and housing commentator Mel Reynolds said that the central government should publish data showing how much residentially zoned land exists in each county.

Lisa Rocca, a representative of the Society of Chartered Surveyors Ireland, says a recent Goodbody’s report on residential land availability finds that there is insufficient zoned and serviced land in the Eastern and Midlands to build the homes needed over the next six years. So more is needed, she says.

Commentators say that an urgent issue to work on would be to get roads, water, electricity and other services to land that is already zoned for residential development.

Running out of land zoned for homes?

A spokesperson for the Department of Housing says that national housing targets have increased since councils drew up their county and city development plans.

Now the national target coming down through the national planning framework is for 50,000 more homes every year until 2040.

“There is a need to plan for a significant increase in the capacity to deliver housing across the country to meet these revised increased population projections and associated housing requirements,” says the spokesperson.

So councils will review their development plans to incorporate the new national planning framework, starting this summer and completing the process by the end of the year.

Councils must rezone enough housing to make sure that residential zoned land doesn’t run out, they said. Increased zoned land “will provide the basis for a significant increase in the capacity for housing supply”, he says.

Dublin City Council assistant chief executive Tony Flynn said in a submission to the national planning framework in September that it has enough land zoned residential, together with plans it is already working on, to meet projected demand.

It referred to ESRI research on future housing demand, which put it for Dublin city at between 5,000 at least and 8,000 at most new homes a year in the city.

Its current development plan is based on an estimate of 6,700 new households year, the submission says. And, that doesn’t include lands at Ballyboggan and at City Edge, where it foresees major development and swathes of rezoned land for housing.

Kilroy, at the Chartered Institute of Building, says he sees pressing blockages to housing further downstream, and not around a lack of residentially zoned land.

There is no shortage of land zoned for homes, whether nationally or in Dublin, he says. “I wonder where this diagnosis is coming from. I am struck by the lack of data behind this position.”

A Dublin City Council issues paper in 2018 said there were 4,500 hectares of residentially zoned land in Dublin city. Kilroy says that would be enough land to build 150,000 homes.

The report also lists more land with mixed zoning that could take some housing too, he says.

Many homes have been built since then but more land has been rezoned for residential including industrial sites, and also institutional lands, under the last development plan.

There is a lot of residential land for which the owners have planning permission too, he says, but no homes are being built.

As of the third quarter of last year in the Dublin region, there were more than 49,200 homes that had been granted planning permission, but on which work hadn’t started yet, according to Department of Housing statistics.

The Department of Housing did publish a land availability survey in 2014, which said that there was enough residential zoned land for 611,000 homes nationwide, and space for 123,000 homes on residential land in the four Dublin local authorities.

Reynolds, the architect, says there has been no equivalent information published since 2014. “The land availability survey needs to be redone.”

A spokesperson for Fingal County Council says they will have more up-to-date data soon. “The mapping process for the residential zoned land tax will assist in identifying the lands,” he says.

In its report – which was commissioned by eight homebuilders – Goodbody found last year that there is space for 138,000 new homes on residential zoned land that doesn’t yet have planning permission in the Eastern and Midlands area.

But it still said that zoned and serviced land is needed for another 40,000 to 70,00o homes to meet housing targets for the region over the next six years.

What’s holding up housing?

“This is a really tricky debate, there is a lot of nuance,” says Philip Lawton, assistant professor of Geography at Trinity College Dublin. “There is definitely zoned land there but there is a question as to whether it is serviced.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Housing also said: “In some cases, there may be constraints on the availability of services to facilitate the development of zoned housing land.”

Indeed, Kilroy says, if the aim is to deliver more homes urgently then there is no point talking about rezoning land, which would take eons to deliver new homes if at all.

“Is the relationship causal in the way that they think it is, in terms of zoned land and new build housing supply?” says Kilroy. “It isn’t.”

There are major infrastructure blocks and labour shortages, he says. “There is no point in pumping more land into a system that may already be approaching capacity.”

Rocca, at the Society of Chartered Surveyors Ireland, says zoning more land for homes can help boost housing supply. “But it is not a solution on its own.”

It needs essential infrastructure, and the lack of that is something that the Society of Chartered Surveyors has consistently highlighted, she says.

“As a result, coordinated planning between local authorities and infrastructure providers is vital to ensure that zoned land can be effectively developed into much-needed housing,” she says.

In its submission to the national planning framework, Dublin City Council also flagged the need for investment in infrastructure given the “significant gap” between planning consent and housing construction.

Reynolds, the architect, says the main block for developers struggling to build in the Dublin region is uncertainty as to whether they can connect up to the water supply. “You can make any changes you want to planning and zoning but you can’t build if there is no water.”

A spokesperson for Uisce Éireann didn’t respond directly to a question as to how many homes in Dublin can be added to the water network each year for the next four years.

A more direct route

Rezoning land won’t necessarily lead to more homes being built in the short to medium term, says Lawton, at Trinity.

But it’s good to make long-term plans for future homes that could be built in future decades, he says – and part of that long-term planning is making sure that what is rezoned is thought out.

“I think there needs to be very careful attention as to what is zoned and where it is zoned. The state needs to manage the land in a particular way,” he says.

For example, the vision for a major new housing development in the south-west of the city, south of Inchicore through the industrial areas along the Naas Road, under the City Edge project, seems like a really good idea, he says.

But the challenge is to deliver on that vision, especially when there are so many businesses and other uses already operating on the land and it isn’t in state ownership, he says.

“You’re making this plan, but what is to stop people deciding I’m going to buy that warehouse and sit on that warehouse?” says Lawton.

Reynolds says the government should focus on ensuring that councils build homes on their own land which is already zoned residential. “Councils own vast amounts of land.”

Kilroy also says that a more direct way the central government could increase building supply would be by reforming local government financing.

He pointed to the experience in the UK, where he says some councils ramped up building significantly after 2018, when then Prime Minister Theresa May lifted borrowing caps.

In Ireland councils don’t have the ability to borrow against their assets to build or buy land, he says. This is different to most European countries.

“Local government needs to be reformed so that councils can borrow, preferably from the international bond market, to buy land, get planning permission, and to build housing directly on your own land,” says Kilroy.

At the moment, there’s a cap on how much local councils collectively can borrow in non-mortgage loans each year. In 2024, that figure for all councils combined was €118 million.

The Department of Housing has hired consultants to review debt levels in local authorities and what appropriate ratios are, a spokesperson said in early March.

“The report based on this review is due to be completed by the middle of July 2025,” they said.