Executive director of @progressireland. Sign up at the link for one policy idea per week.
Dublin via London via Limerick
- Tweets 5,465
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- Followers 5,723
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When Brazilian 20-25 year olds randomly got assigned housing, their probability of having kids went up 33%
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Let’s CPO the 17 golf courses inside the M50 and build 540,000 homes and end the housing crisis and be legends.
What if we took a 160 acre golf course and repurposed it for housing and saved 95% of all the trees? Now you have 40,000 people living on two future light rail stops with a wonderful tree-lined dense walkable neighborhood
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My STOP WASTING SCARCE CITY SPACE agenda. 1. Cars seem important because theyre bulky and everywhere. But they transport sod-all. Only 28% of Dublin journeys. One lane: 2,000 people per hour by car, or 14,000 by bike. Close car lanes and watch the traffic evaporate. Thread…
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Fingal County Council says Dublin Airport can't demolish these unused old concrete ramps because they have architectural merit 🙃
independent.ie/business/iris…
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Today An Coimisiún Pleanála upheld Fingal CC’s decision. It said demolishing the old ramps “would diminish the visual amenity on approach to T1” 🫠
Fingal County Council says Dublin Airport can't demolish these unused old concrete ramps because they have architectural merit 🙃
independent.ie/business/iris…
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We launched Progress Ireland today, a think tank whose mission is to connect Ireland to ideas that will help unlock its potential. What is, who are we, why did we do it?
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This is a nice piece from @jburnmurdoch summarising recent research on market rate housing. [free to read]
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Though Ireland is the eighth least-densely populated country in the EU, it has the fourth-longest commuting time
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Right beside a Dart stop, on the sea, 20 mins from town. Could be 100 homes. A comprehensive land tax would end a lot of this nonsense
Dublin City Council owns this 4400 sq m site beside Clontarf Road station and were leasing it to Westwood gym as an overflow car park for €35k/year. The lease is up and what does DCC want to do? Offer it to them as a car park again for 20 more years. 🤦♂️
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The problem is that locals people can organise against this; impossible to organise people who may or may not need to move to apartments in Dundrum in 2025
Imagine Dundrum Public Meeting last night in Taney Parish Hall about the proposed Fast Track Dundrum Village SHD for 881 Apartments. Full house 🏆 @donalodonovan @PatKennyNT @rteliveline @gordondeeg @thejournal_ie @breakingnewsie
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Illegal to build in Ireland: no elevator, no balcony, step free route only to ground floor, dead end travel distance in each unit >9m
A family oriented 6-plex:
1230sf, 3BR+Office/2BA
And at 54' wide ... means it can fit on a 6000sf lot. In either suburban or mixed-use urban neighrbhood
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We don’t build a metro because it’s nicer or because it’s faster. We build it because of its capacity. Dublin buses move about 2,500-7,500 people per lane per hour; metros move 20,000 to 80,000 per direction per hour. More capacity = more scope for housing in central Dublin.
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Interesting piece on how booming Sydney (population 5.3m) reduced rents by 7% over four years by building 34k homes per year. To get homes built, it liberalised planning rules.
worksinprogress.co/issue/a-p…
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Should we build tall apartment buildings? No, they'd overshadow us. Should we build houses at the edge of town? No, that would be sprawl. Should we infill the unused land in the centre? No, people would have to look at small houses on their neighbour's property.
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Ireland is victim of a bad metaphor. 🧵
The metaphor is that cities are like a balloons: squeeze them at one end and they expand at the other.
But that's not how cities works. When development gets restricted, it doesn't get diverted elsewhere. It just goes away.
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Why is there so little fuss over this hate crime bill? It’s incredibly broad.
“Upon such evidence being given, and a warrant granted, the guards can enter your home, search every person there, seize every single electronic device in the house, your phones, your laptops, your tablets, those of your partner, children’s phones, they can take anything, diaries, books, any object at all, and hold them for an indefinite amount of time.”
@SenatorKeogan criticising Section 15 of the Hate Speech Bill, which covers search warrants.
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The big objection to garden homes is that they're "beds in sheds". But the thing about them is, they're so simple to build that they can be built to a high standard AND be highly affordable. An A2-rated unit costs 80% less to build than an equivalent flat.
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Let's give out about planning! It’s hard to argue that Irish planning is bad, because your evidence is things that *don’t* exist, but should. So, here are some things that don't exist here, but do exist in places with better planning setups. 🧵
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“I’ve always been suspicious about those arguments,” says Collison. “They smack of something that suggests the laws of economics apply everywhere except housing.” independent.ie/business/iris…
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This is Ireland’s fate unless we rethink the way we do capital spending. Ireland’s model is like that of the UK and US, and unlike that of European countries. This is urgent, as Ireland embarks on a giant capital spending program
“When Britain builds infrastructure, whether that is railways, underground systems, trams or roads, we tend to pay more – a lot more in some cases – than other countries in Europe."
I'm quoted in @Telegraph on Britain's high transport build costs.
telegraph.co.uk/business/202…
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Biggest thing we can do as Europeans is show leaders we understand the stakes around O&G sanctions, and accept them, and would be willing to go through a recession and higher cost of living as the price of helping Ukraine.
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.@ProgressIreland's first plan is about infrastructure. Ireland is about to splurge on infrastructure. But we’re already on the wrong track. Unless we change track, these projects will be slower and more expensive than they need to be. 🧵... progressireland.org/to-save-…
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This is getting out of hand — I’m on @drivetimerte in about 40 minutes to talk about the scourge that is urban golf
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This is such nonsense from the car parks guy. Dublins public transport is crap in large part because cars hog the road space. Fewer cars in the city makes it more attractive and makes transport more efficient, a win win newstalk.com/news/new-plan-t…
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Ireland's clumsy rent control system, has unsurprisingly resulted in a collapse in homes available for rent. Only 424 available in Dublin in August.
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"For every 100 homes available to rent thirteen years ago, there are just three on the market today."
Inside Ireland’s rental crisis: Surging prices, incoherent policies, and the build-to-rent debate thecurrency.news/articles/92…
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This is the big solution: nationalise house building. Ok. We need 50k homes per year or so. The biggest house builder in the USA does 71k per year. Good luck with that!
The state could buy out one of the larger housing developers & create a state construction company - as suggested by @RoryHearne
This would ensure we have a consistent rate of housing output to break the property bubble cycle & mitigate against procurement inflation.
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In around ten years small modular reactors will be rolling off production lines. Ireland should be ready for them.
The Government has approved the final steps for Ireland to become an associate member of the European Organisation for Nuclear Research rte.ie/news/2025/0715/152366…
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159 homes in the most high demand part of the country? “No” said DCC, not if they’re for renters thejournal.ie/apartments-dub…
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Have to be allowed to build 97 units per acre on a site within walking distance of the city. On a tram line. Good luck meeting our housing needs if you can’t
Planning permission refused for 97 build-to-rent apartments in Milltown irishtimes.com/business/cons…
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We need a plan for where to put the houses.
Ireland is targeting 50,500 new homes per year, for decades. For context, that's one Cork City annually. A new Dublin every four years. Where will they go?🧵
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Moya Doherty: “I was available at the end of a phone at any time” — not sure this is how board oversight is meant to work
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A penny has dropped for me recently. Ireland planning system is said to be democratic. But it isn’t really. What gives it away is the absence of arguments about planning policy. In a democracy, you’re meant to argue.
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Never forget: Ireland and the UK’s planning systems are weird outliers. Other countries don’t do it our way. Few places have worse housing outcomes
I dare you to make it to the end of this explanation of the UK's housing planning process without tearing your hair out of your skull:
worksinprogress.co/issue/why…
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My problem with this is the idea that Dublin is fine the way it is. Dublin is a weirdly-shaped city and that’s got a lot to do with why it’s expensive.
It’s probably very hard for people who grew up glamorising cities with tall buildings to understand why tall buildings aren’t necessary, why Dublin’s Georgian & Victorian urban core is unique in all the right ways. Dublin deserves an adequate & progressive urban vision. #Urbanism
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@ronanlyons looked at heights of mid-size European cities. Dublin was at the bottom. thecurrency.news/articles/10…
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Disagree on this — the biggest bottleneck for public transport in Ireland is frequency and reliability, not cost. Eg Dublin bus’s €260m revenue from fares is best spent on more and faster buses
A tiny financial cost, a huge social, environmental and climatic gain. Make public transport free. Its the future. Go for it now. 👇
irishtimes.com/opinion/david…
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Developers and international cuckoo funds, with the tacit backing of the FFG government, are engaged in a conspiracy to build dwellings in Ireland.
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Banning demolition on embodied carbon grounds will result in more carbon emitted, higher housing costs, longer commutes and less walkable cities. That's because the embodied carbon accounting ignores emissions from transport.
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News: if you ignore the cost of the land underneath them, houses are cheaper
irishtimes.com/business/cons…
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Good piece by Eoin Burke Kennedy (linked below). The housing system is so complex that only the state – and very-large developers – are capable of operating it. If the rules were simpler and clearer, smaller developers would be able to operate.
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This is good from @ronanlyons. BTR built bigger apartments than have ever been built in Ireland, by the tens of thousands. Now we're seemingly about to end it thecurrency.news/articles/99…
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My pet theory is common law derived planning in Anglophone countries (more uncertain) vs Napoleonic planning in Europe (less uncertain)
This chart from @jburnmurdoch in the FT piece linked below is so interesting/damning.
on.ft.com/3JIJrFT
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irishtimes.com/opinion/2025/… Dublin is committed to compact growth; the 900 homes by the Luas station in Dundrum were rejected for excessive compactness (aka "height, scale, and massing")
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Parking. The big one! Minimum parking requirements make new developments more expensive and bake-in car dependency. One city centre parking space can accommodate a dock for 10 e-scooters. Take out a row of them and you’ve got a bike lane
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Ireland truly is the poster child for neoliberalism.
Excellent conversation earlier on inclusive growth.
Still struck by this chart from Prof. Brian Nolan versus what we sometimes tell ourselves.
From 1987 to 2019 Ireland had the largest growth in median real incomes and the largest fall in inequality of any developed economy.
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Urban golf. Golf is nice, but it’s not for cities. At average capacity, a golf course needs three acres per golfer. On the same space, you could fit 225 nice mid-rise homes. It’s a no-brainer.
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Want to stick it to the landlords? Build as many homes as possible. Below are filings by IRES REIT and Invitation Homes, two big landlords.
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Todays the day: the last day of covid quarantine, on what should have been the ninth day of paternity leave. I’m off now to meet the wean. Thanks to the good people of Twitter for keeping me company
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Some golfers took me to task over my golf tweets: ‘why not build over soccer pitches?’ So I had to justify myself in excruciating detail. Thanks to twitter you get to see my workings:
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This project is a no-brainer. It would be transformative for Dublin, even more than the Metrolink
I assume metro will happen (maybe its a glass half full day) .... I would revive this project
piped.video/watch?v=4KJyp7GP…
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Looking forward to going on @ClaireByrneLive tomorrow morning to talk institutional investors in housing with @RoryHearne. Tune in from 10.30
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From @ronanlyons, the chart everyone needs to keep in mind always and forever. thecurrency.news/articles/10…
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Not sure whether this is true, but I heard before that Copenhagen shifted from car dominance to bike dominance by removing 4 per cent of its city centre parking spaces every year. Squeeze them out!
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Thread: TALL BUILDINGS ARE GOOD SOMETIMES. Gentle density is nicer than tower density: more liveable, more beautiful, cheaper to build per unit. But it doesn’t follow that tall buildings are never the way to go.
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TASTEFUL MID-RISE COURTYARD BLOCKS WON'T CUT IT. Pictured: the area Dublin City Council would need to demolish and rebuild with mid-rise to meet housing demand. 🧵
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We're dismantling the one part of the market that was delivering homes -- large scale build to rent.
Allianz pauses investments in Irish residential property market irishtimes.com/business/cons…
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The aspiration is for it to cost €500-600m/km for the 16km of underground. The global average per @alon_levy is €250m/km.
irishtimes.com/politics/2022…
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The latest one is that fixing the housing shortage by building houses is impractical, because it would require building too many houses.
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You’re right but I suspect it’s because Ireland was dirt poor during modernist urban planners’ heyday in 50s-70s. tripeanddrisheen.substack.co…
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One 5km tunnel linking Connolly Station in the east and Heuston Station in the west would, at a stroke, give Dublin a very serviceable metro system.
Read the full post here: worksinprogress.co/issue/the…
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This will be one to watch. If Ireland did what they did — allow the development of small apartment blocks everywhere *by right* — it would be transformative
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This is an obvious place to start. So many wide one way streets in Dublin. Clip them a bit and make cycling much more convenient
In 2008, France made it law that practically all 30km/h zones had to be made two way for cycling.
In Paris, this meant 200km of (typically quiet) streets were unlocked for new routes, helping cycling to be the most direct and convenient option. And it cost hardly anything to do.
ALT No entry “sauf” cycles sign in Paris
ALT Contraflow cycling markings
ALT Contraflow cycling markings
ALT Contraflow cycle lane in Paris
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New Danish neighbourhoods win praise for their ambition and the quality of their design. One of them, Nordhavn, will accommodate 40,000 residents and workers on a peninsula north of Copenhagen.
But one of the Danes' big housing innovations is under the hood…
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When we banned bedsits and co-living during a giant boom in urban jobs. thecurrency.news/articles/96…
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This is a big example, but there are 100,000 small examples of things that aren’t built because of planning rules. businesspost.ie/5f943b6f businesspost.ie/companies/in…
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Great stuff! Better thought of as an anti-traffic policy than an anti-car policy. Will stop us wasting scarce city space on a woefully inefficient transport method. Will free up space to move many multiples of people through the city in the same time.
irishtimes.com/environment/c…
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The RTE board’s remuneration committee had specific terms of reference. It failed to comply with them
NEW: RTÉ pay committee chair, Moya Doherty, didn’t attend remuneration meetings for almost four years thecurrency.news/articles/12…
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Making this floorplan legal. Pro: unlocks tens of thousands of homes in locations with short commutes, great amenities, and lower emissions, at low construction cost. Con: people who choose to live there would have no window in their bedroom.
Converting office space into beautiful, functional housing isn’t easy — but “Easy” isn’t why I got into this gig.
Working on this 4 bed unit now. Deep floor plates are a challenge but this layout is perfect for young families.
Let’s unf***ck our cities!
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Mumbai allowed apartment buildings to be taller. This resulted in 28% more apartments and a 29% decrease in apartment prices. Apartments also got 18% smaller, offset by more shared amenity spaces
Geetika Nagpal
JMP: "Scaling Heights: Affordability Implications of Zoning Deregulation in India"
Website: geetika-nagpal.com
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If we want more affordable housing we need to lift bureaucratic and other obstacles to building houses. Blocking BTR won't help those who need social housing. Blocking Dublin won't help Sligo. Blocking Dublin certainly won't help Dublin.
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We’re honoured to announce Brigid Laffan has joined Progress Ireland’s board as a non-executive director. Brigid is Chancellor of the University of Limerick and Emeritus Professor at the European University Institute in Florence.
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Overdevelopment
25 Mount Pleasant Avenue Lower, Dublin 6
- Derelict since 2016
- Permission granted for apartments in 2019. Sold again in 2022
- Last week @dubcitycouncil rejected a new application for a 3 storey building of 7 apartments, calling it “overdevelopment”
#derelictdublin
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Great stuff — now to build densely along the lines
Good news for Cork. Cabinet today approved the purchase of 90 new battery electric carriages for delivery in 2026. They are ear-marked for the new metropolitan rail network we are planning for Cork, as well as providing new services to Wicklow town, Kildare and on the Dart lines.
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Soccer: 27 players per game, 2 hours per game, So 5* 25* 2 / 7 = 39 person hours of football per day. 2 acre pitch so 20 person hours of football per acre. SOCCER IS 8X MORE SPACE EFFICIENT THAN GOLF. Next: how many people really use our urban graveyards??
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Delighted at this news. There's a chronic shortage of well-located homes for small households. They'll help the old, the young, and they'll help homeowners cover the bills.
irishtimes.com/politics/2025…?
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