Department halts its probe into thousands of unactivated planning permissions 

Then taoiseach Micheál Martin, then tánaiste Leo Varadkar, Environment Minister Eamon Ryan, and Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien TD launching Housing for All in 2021. It has emerged that EY has been paid €2.6m for services related to the strategy since the start of 2022. Picture: Maxwell's

The Department of Housing has declined to press ahead with an investigation of why planning permissions are not being activated at the height of Ireland’s housing emergency.

It has also emerged that the Government has paid consultants EY €2.6m for “data strategy services” relating to the Department of Housing’s marquee Housing for All plan since the beginning of 2022.

As part of that contract, the department had previously tasked EY with a body of work aimed at helping the State “better understand the potential underlying reasons” for why some planning permissions are never commenced.

Initial report in May

The initial phase of that work concluded in May of this year, and revealed that 43,000 housing units with planning permission in Dublin had yet to begin construction at the end of 2022.

The 43,000 units that had not begun construction by the end of last year in Dublin accounted for roughly half of the estimated 90,000 unactivated planning permissions in the country.

The EY research further found that apartment developments were nearly seven times less likely to have commenced construction compared with housing developments in Dublin.

Department ends investigation 

It’s understood that despite original plans to follow up the non-commencements project by probing the underlying reasons for such, the department has now elected not to take that research any further.

Unused planning permissions are a key contributor to the sluggish nature of Ireland’s new housing market, with the opposition in the Dáil repeatedly calling for the introduction of ‘use it or lose it’ laws to incentivise construction and discourage land-hoarding and speculation on the part of developers.

A Department of Housing spokesperson said that the initial data-gathering project conducted by EY regarding unused planning permissions had cost just over €42,000.

“The department had considered whether additional research was required but was satisfied with the information, which was provided under the contract. Therefore, no further work was commissioned and no research or investigation was decommissioned,” they said.

EY's €2.6m Housing for All bill 

The €42,300 spent on the initial phase of research is accounted for in a total of €847,251, excluding VAT, paid to EY regarding work conducted on Housing For All since the beginning of 2023.

A further €1.74m was paid to the consultancy in 2022 as part of an overarching data services project relating to Housing For All which saw the establishment of a “housing data platform solution” to “assist with measuring progress” of the overall plan.

The housing data portal, which consists of 48 separate interfaces acts as “a ‘single source’ of data for the Irish housing sector”, the spokesperson said. That data is not currently available to the public.

The spokesperson added that the ‘data strategy services’ contract awarded to EY in 2022 was “required given the scale and ambition of Housing for All and the need for improved information systems to support the delivery of the plan”.