Just 4% of private homes granted planning permission in Dublin city last year were three-beds – is that enough?

At the November monthly Dublin City Council meeting, Independents 4 Change Councillor Pat Dunne flagged the number 83 in a report. 

It jumped out, he said. 

That was how many three-bed private apartments and houses Dublin City Council granted planning permission for in 2024, the report said. 

Well, among the 1,926 homes permitted in developments of more than 10 homes, at least. 

Projects granted permission last year joined the pile of existing unbuilt planning applications that added up, at the end of 2024, to almost 18,000 homes in the city.

Still though, at the meeting, Dunne said the figure shows how the state needs to lean in further to provide larger homes in its own social and affordable housing developments. 

The national government and Dublin City Council have pushed and pulled for years over the mix of homes that should be built in the city.

Council policies have tried to require a greater share of multi-bedroom apartments and homes – especially in certain neighbourhoods. The Department of Housing has pushed for more studios and one-beds.

Larger apartments might make room for more, larger families to live and stay in the city as they grow. Or, goes the counter argument, smaller ones are missing and really needed – and more viable, or profitable, for builders, so more likely to be built.

In July, Minister for Housing James Browne scrapped any restrictions in council development plans around mix in apartment blocks, paving the way for entire blocks of one-bed homes and studios – save for a few circumstances.

Dublin City Council hasn’t responded to queries asking if it has a breakdown of how many homes, of which sizes, have been granted permission so far in 2025. 

Dropping minimums

Criticisms of councils requiring particular mixes of apartment sizes have been made for years by developers. The Land Development Agency (LDA) has also lobbied against larger apartments.

In April, it complained to the Department of Housing that councils were asking for a “significant quantum” of three-beds. 

But three-bedroom apartments aren’t financially “viable”, the agency said, and they are “very difficult” to let “and not in demand”.

The new guidelines for apartment design standards issued by the Department of Housing in July talk about the need to ensure that apartment building is viable.

“Unit mix requirements can impact on the viability of apartment schemes and may not support the best outcomes in terms of the number of units delivered, or the particular need within an area,” they say. 

“Three-bed units have a high delivery cost relative to other unit types and can impact on the viability of a scheme as a whole,” it says. 

Orla Hegarty,  assistant professor at UCD’s School of Architecture, says that as she sees it, the main pressure for smaller homes comes from developers and investors rather than what people need.

Because, “the rental income per square meter on smaller homes is much higher than on larger homes”, she says.

But on the other side of the equation are more important considerations, she says. 

“Our objective for housing more people in the country, our climate commitments and people's actual human need for their household wellbeing,” says Hegarty, “and activities, space to grow, build communities and family formation, which is a different thing entirely.”

The narrative is always that the only way to make a development viable is to cut sizes and quality, which is the most naive approach, she says. 

There isn’t questioning of the business models, or what could expand the market, and drive competition, innovation and efficiency, she says. “Which are the strategies which would really improve affordability.”

Demand for three-beds

A spokesperson for the LDA – which builds cost-rental homes, as well as social homes – wouldn’t say which three-beds it had found difficult to let, and where they are, and possible reasons why.

Elsewhere, there are signs of pent-up demand for cost-rental three-beds.  

Housing charity Respond recently opened applications for its new cost-rental development at Lisieux Park in Sandyford. 

It got 904 applications for the five three-bedroom apartments in the estate, said a spokesperson last Wednesday.

Those aspiring to three-bed homes also say they have seen lengthy queues and desperate bidding wars.

“We started looking in the summer,” said Miriam Burke, on the phone last week. “We have seen, like we have viewed, over 50 houses.”

She and her husband rent a two-bedroom house in Dublin 8 with their two small kids, which works okay for now while their youngest is still really small. “But like, we need more space.”

There’s an argument that kids can share a room, she says. But “the houses are just too small anyway for family life. You know, you're on top of each other the whole time.”

They’re looking to buy in the city – somewhere in Dublin 8 or Dublin 12, say – because they’ve built their life in the city, she says. 

“Life keeps on happening, and you end up with kids, and they end up going to the creches in the city, going to schools in the city, and you don't want to move,” says Burke. 

They like to walk and cycle most places, she says.

Some viewings of three-beds have had huge queues, others not at first, she says. “Then you go back for another viewing, and there's way more. The demand is crazy.”

They’re looking at homes with a guide price of €400,000, she says. “Because we knew that they would go up and up and up.”

They’ve been in five frenzied bidding wars, she says, which push prices up way past budgets – and, for those in worse condition, eat up any cushion set aside to do them up to habitable.

They decided to look again at two-beds because of how suspicious that third bedroom can look anyways – a box room, old bathroom, or half a partitioned second bedroom, she says. “There are so many houses that have these.”

Difficulties of predicting demand

Under the last National Planning Framework, councils have had to carry out housing need and demand assessments (HNDAs), putting in statistics for their areas to a tool that spits out future predicted housing needs under different scenarios.

It’s given councils more of an evidence base for future housing needs than they had before, says Carla Kayanan, an assistant professor at Maynooth University who has assessed how the HNDAs are going.

But one criticism of the tool has been that it doesn’t really specify what size homes are needed to meet demand, she says.

It mostly outputs tenure type, she says. So, predictions of need for social homes, private market rentals, and the like.

Another hindrance that those working with the tool have mentioned is the lack of neighbourhood data and analysis in the centralised database, she says. Councils can plug that in, but they have to have time, resources and skills. 

Hegarty, the assistant professor at UCD, says it’s important for planners to be able to look at local demand and mix.

Looking at the whole country and saying that there are loads of family homes isn’t that instructive, she says. “If there are family bungalows in Roscommon, that's not really any use to anybody in Dublin 1.”

In Dublin 1, there is a deficit of larger homes, she says, which would allow people to stay in their community. Arguably, one reason why Dublin 1 isn’t really thriving, she says, is because existing housing stock is a barrier to growth.

Getting the mix of new housing right is very spatially specific, she says.

Dublin City Council did ask consultants who carried out its HNDA to hone in on smaller parts of the city – on the Liberties and the north inner-city. 

The HNDA data does come with caveats, though. 

One big challenge is that so much quickly changed after the guidance on how to prepare the HNDAs was first issued. The figures quickly became dated, says Kayanan, of Maynooth University.

The Covid-19 pandemic changed the dynamic of cities, and more than 100,000 people fled to Ireland from Ukraine following Russia’s full-scale invasion, she said.

It shows how challenging it can be to predict really long-term population growth, said Kayanan.

While the HNDA for Dublin did look at predicted trends in household sizes – it didn’t explicitly translate that into what size homes are needed. What size home should you expect a couple to buy or rent?

Hegarty, the assistant professor at UCD, said there’s an incorrect and simplistic assumption underlying the push for prioritising inflexible one-beds and studios. “Which is that people change their home every time their family size changes and that everyone could afford it.”

The assumption is that a couple moving into an apartment won't be planning children, or even having friends around, or that an elderly person won’t need a carer or family members to stay overnight, she says. 

Some people with disabilities need extra space to accommodate that, she says. Many people increasingly work from home too, says Hegarty. “They need an extra space for that.” 

People have guests to visit, or hobbies, gym equipment, musical instruments, art supplies. “Lots of things that need space that don't fit in minimum standards,” she says. 

Another narrative is that everybody will downsize in retirement to their correctly-sized homes and it would free up family homes, she says. 

But “if you look at the average sales price for family homes in Dublin, and you look at the price of new apartments, most downsizers in Dublin couldn't afford a new apartment”, she says. “And in any case, there's hardly any new apartments for sale.” 

There’s this idea that somebody who has a house perhaps worth €400,000 to €500,000 in a suburb of Dublin would liquidate that asset and pay all of it out at €2,500 a month for an apartment for 10 or 15 years, she says. “It’s sort of an economic nonsense.”

Looking to the state

At the monthly council meeting, Dunne, the Independents 4 Change councillor, said that he often stresses during committees the need for the council to step up with three-bedroom and larger homes. 

Because, he said, “it is very very clear from those figures that the private sector aren’t doing that”.

Labour Councillor Darragh Moriarty says that he zigs and zags a little on the question of what size homes the council should be building. Because he is also conscious of the great need for one-bed homes for those on the social-housing list, he says.

There are developments in his area that are examples of egregious overconcentration of one-beds, says Moriarty.

He points to the Old Steelworks site, along James’s Street, near where Steeven’s Lane branches down the hill towards Heuston Station and the Liffey. 

Construction is underway behind hoardings. The 167 homes are to be 136 one-beds, 27 two-beds, and 4 three-beds. 

But, says Moriarty, they are also to be taken over and managed as social homes by Clúid  Housing – and again, those social homes are really needed. 

As of July 2024, of the 15,000 people on the main social housing list, about 9,900 (66 percent) were waiting for a one-bed home, the figures show.

Moriarty says he is wary about some of the arguments used to oppose one-bed homes.

He doesn’t like arguments that suggest families build communities while couples or single people don’t, he says. “I don’t like the binaries.”

Still, while he has been a strong advocate for more one-bedroom homes, he says, the balance does seem to be wrong at the moment with too many developments with a high proportion of studios and one beds. 

“There is no doubt that there is a huge huge need to increase housing across the spectrum of need,” he said.

He is also conscious of the need for flexible homes, he said. 

This came up during discussions about the mix of homes for the Dublin City Council’s flagship development of cost-rental and social homes at Emmet Road in Inchicore.

It shook out with 578 homes – with 110 studios, 172 one-beds, 252 two-beds, and 46 three-beds planned for that development, where site preparation has been underway. 

But they had talked about having some one-and-a-half beds, says Moriarty. Homes with that bit of extra space – or even spare rooms shared by households in a block – for a visitor, carer, or child to come and stay. Cost killed that though, he says.

He and other councillors are also acutely aware of the need for a batch of larger social homes, he says, as larger families are stuck in homeless accommodation the longest.

At a meeting in September, Ruth Dowling, a council executive manager, said there were 781 families in homeless accommodation who were also on the council’s social housing list, she said. 

Of them, 223 had been in emergency accommodation for more than two years. 

And, more than 80 percent of those long-term homeless families are big families, she says, while the council has few four-bedroom homes. 

Dowling had been speaking in the context of a discussion on how to spend Dublin City Council’s budget for buying second-hand homes.

The council was conscious of the need for properties for big families stuck long-term in homeless accommodation. “So that is where we would like to target any additional monies we get,” she said to the chamber.

Moriarty says this is something councillors have been pushing for. 

But he is also aware, he says, that buying these from the private market means that the council is competing with others for existing three-bed and four-bed homes.

Dublin City Council does have a higher percentage of three-bed homes and larger in its own pipeline than the private sector.

As of November 2025, Dublin City Council had about 17,000 homes in its pipeline across all tenure types – social, affordable-purchase, cost-rental – for the next seven years. 

Of those, 10 percent are set to be three-beds, 0.001 percent are set to be four-beds or more, a breakdown shows.

Meanwhile, of the roughly 15,000 people waiting on the council’s main social housing list 9 percent are waiting for a three-bed, 1 percent are waiting for a four-bed, and 0.1 percent are waiting for a five-bed.

If you add in the transfer list though – which includes people wanting to switch homes because of overcrowding – the need for each of those sizes is even greater. 

Of the 16,100 people on the transfer list, 21 percent are waiting for three-beds, 2 percent are waiting for four-beds, and 0.2 percent are waiting for five-beds. 

Kayanan, the assistant professor at Maynooth University, says the HNDA tool used by councils to forward plan, and predict future housing needs, is currently under review. 

The revised National Planning Framework, published in April, says the tool is being updated to now take into account new projections and scenarios laid out by the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI).  

That research lays out 12 possible scenarios. Which shows just how difficult it is in the current times to predict future need, says Kayanan.