Garden rooms to be exempt


I can understand this situation, for someone with a big site there would be limited impact on neighbours, parking etc.

However, I doubt the ESB would be giving a separate connection, I see it more as a non adjoining room for a family member who may already be living in the house.

I doubt it would qualify for rent a room scheme as that currently requires it to be part of the house and not an outhouse etc. Needs to be a door in-between.

I wouldn't like to see it go down the AirBnB route either.
 
misemoi said:
Also what will the knock on impact be on converted garages, granny flats etc? If i had one of these that is not exempt from planning for rental, I can't really see the difference and I would be demanding a review of this too.
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Neither of these are exempted for rentals and usually there is a condition in planning that once "Granny" has passed on the unit will be merged back into the home.

In practice this doesn't happen, but if the house gets sold the new buyer will get stick from their solicitor once they spot that there is a condition of prior planning that wasn't adhered to. Planning desk in the council will give you hassle also in any future PPs if they feel a condition was not met of a prior PP. (A former landlord of mine put in a PP a couple of years ago, and one of the reasons for refusal was non compliance with an older retention application that was successful - in fact that condition was compliant, but the applicant hadn't demonstrated it clearly in the new application).
 
Leo said:
People are constrained in what they can do today, their neighbours have certain rights and entitlements that can't be trampled by the selfish actions of a one individual. Let's not pretend that this proposal will distinguish those rights entirely.
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Indeed they are constrained but the news is full of the same selfish people who push the boundaries in the existing system and get away with it because enforcement seems to be a huge problem.
I don't disagree that infrastructure is a huge problem - without a managed development system you also cannot adequately plan for future infrastructure: the two go hand in hand.
But the bigger question for me is why, if we are zoning 5 years in advance in local development plans, there isn't a corresponding response from grid planning, water infrastructure etc to respond to how they are going to future infrastructure requirements in light of that decision.
Otherwise councils are really just sitting there are saying yes you can build on that land but in reality there is no possibility because of a lack of infrastructure which nobody is going to be accountable for.

There is a really good example of this in my locality where a dodgy PP given 20 years ago left the landowners (2 brothers) with planning but half the land wasn't serviced so in reality he could only build on half of it. 20 years later they decided to look for rezoning on the remainder of their land, with a suggestion a lot of their land could be gifted to the council to extend an already huge public park.
The far left literally lost their spleen and actually picketed the council offices locally several times at the outrage.
In practice the planners recommended rejection anyway on the grounds that they hadn't used half their already zoned land (they couldn't, as it wasn't serviced) so the whole thing came to nothing. Everybody lost, except for the local far left who had their day in the spotlight.

I did a year on contract working for the company who designs the grids, and used to regularly go for pints with one of the grid designers. Apparently in the process of planning they have to take everything into account, from elevation, ground type, to proximity to residences and things like intersections with roads etc, but apparently the problem is that once their plan goes to the councils, they make mincemeat of plans.
There are very nice political careers to be had via saying no to all change.
 
Tuscany said:
In terms of addressing the lack of rental accommodation, this initiative would be of little benefit. However, as the Indo article says “a lot of the rural TDs are delighted’’.
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Of course they are, because its exclusively rural areas that are hard hit by ever more complicated and restrictive "local needs" and other restrictions that make it impossible for people who live there to build on their own land, while watching outsiders with deep pockets swooping in and hoovering up at high prices local land/property they cannot afford on local salaries.
 
a) is 14k+ homeless people including over 4000 children, not an emergency?
b) we have HUGE amounts of green space by European standards
c) a huge number of people are living in "sub-standard cramped accommodation" because of restrictive planning laws and poor enforcement
 
lff12 said:
a) is 14k+ homeless people including over 4000 children, not an emergency?
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No, it really isn't. The fact that the current situation has persisted so long without significant numbers of deaths pretty much proves it's not an emergency as that word is defined. People calling it an emergency are generally doing so for political reasons.

lff12 said:
c) a huge number of people are living in "sub-standard cramped accommodation" because of restrictive planning laws and poor enforcement
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Yep, but sticking some of them in a sub-standard, and even more cramped shed isn't likely to resolve that.


lff12 said:
There are very nice political careers to be had via saying no to all change.
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Very true, perhaps our greatest challenge is that a great portion of the population insist on electing politicians who simply aren't interested or competent enough to actually tackle some of these issues.
 

Most of the local need houses I see are not exactly modest. Any money saved on land goes into the house.
 
Tuscany said:
In terms of addressing the lack of rental accommodation, this initiative would be of little benefit.
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One senior TD has told a neighbour if mine (rural) that it is near certain to be restricted to family members - at least initially.

It's not intended to be a solution to rental crisis, but an option for grown up children to have an initial independent living space and also the substantial numbers of single parents (usually fathers) who find themselves struggling to find a reasonably priced place to rent.

But an interesting benefit is that it may allow for planning to be applied for in some situations where it would be required (over 40sqm) without the "building line" rejection that is used often.

The initial draft proposals will be interesting
 
lff12 said:
a) is 14k+ homeless people including over 4000 children, not an emergency?
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Over 70% of homeless people are in Dublin and remember "children" can be anyone up to 17 years and 364 days (Some politicians love pointing out the "children", hoping that it portrays 5 year olds.)

It is very much a Dublin emergency at that level. Less so outside Dublin

Also if you look at the breakdown of nationality, 46% of the Dublin figures are Irish, 25% EEA / UK and 29% outside Europe.
 
Hardly a surprise? If I add to the market value of my home the LPT increases? Property tax is still not large enough to change behaviours in how we home ourselves. This won't impact on who puts in the garden rooms.
 
It would be impossible to monitor and collect extra LPT., with the same Eircode.
Have a look on Google maps, in parts of Dublin every 2nd garden has one.
This is the fear factor, make a few examples of people in the courts.
 
fistophobia said:
It would be impossible to monitor and collect extra LPT., with the same Eircode.
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No different than the situation as it stands today. We already see people being forced to pay up for under declaration upon selling.

fistophobia said:
Have a look on Google maps, in parts of Dublin every 2nd garden has one.
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I don't think they're all that common, but surely if you can look on Google Maps and see them, Revenue might consider doing likewise? There's precedence of other countries using Google Maps for similar purposes.
 
When LPT was introduced in 2013, I noted that it was a peculiar move to tax housing when even at that stage we had an obvious housing shortage.

I wasn't wrong.
 
T McGibney said:
When LPT was introduced in 2013, I noted that it was a peculiar move to tax housing when even at that stage we had an obvious housing shortage.
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There's a massive difference between a (miniscule) property tax on homes already built and taxes on the construction of new homes. One acts to increase the price to the purchaser without a corresponding increase in price to the seller and so artificially reduces supply in a market where there are rigid constraints on purchasers buying power. The other makes absolutely no difference whatsoever to the supply of new construction..

LPT on a half million euro home (2022 value) is currently about €500. VAT on the same home, sold new for €500k, is probably going to be in the region of €70k. Plus another €5k in stamp duty, land registry fees, VAT on legal fees.

I'd vote in the morning to abolish VAT on new builds (also stamp duty, land registry fees, and maybe even reduce the LPT for several years), even just for first time buyers (although I think it should be unrestricted). But you could double or triple (or more) the LPT for existing houses and it'd still have zero impact on the supply of new homes.
 
"But you could double or triple (or more) the LPT for existing houses and it'd still have zero impact on the supply of new homes."

The headline on the front page of today's Irish Independent would suggest otherwise. Of course people take taxes, big and small, into account when deciding what to do with their money. And it's still odd to levy taxes consequent on construction and improvement of a scarce asset while committing resources elsewhere to alleviate that scarcity.
 
If these modular homes are such a viable alternative, why not just put a bunch of them in a serviced field and test the market?
 
Has anybody heard any more news on this since the original idea was floated? Seems to have lost it's wings.
 
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