A spokesperson for the Department of Housing told JOE that the new apartment guidelines, published in 2018,"in no way represent a lowering of standards". It is hard square this with the 42-bedrooms-per-kitchen model.
"I suspect that even the communal living apartments of Soviet Russia had more generous spatial standards than are apparent in this planning application."The planned development has been met with plenty of online derision, particularly from young people, who see it as yet another sign that affordable housing will remain out of their grasp for the foreseeable future.
The Department of Housing told JOE that"these niche, shared living projects are not envisaged as an alternative or replacement to the more conventional apartment developments". And yet, on the exact site proposed for this co-living project, there had been a proposal for 52 "conventional apartment developments". Or"apartments" as they were known in the halcyon days of people being able to live places.
As things stand, Fine Gael is ploughing ahead with a National Broadband Plan that they have been advised against on the grounds of"affordability, value for money and risk". They occupy an evidence-free world where all that matters is that independent contractors have as much room to manoeuvre as possible, while the rest of us share a kitchen with 40.6 other living units.