DCC raises fire safety concerns for new apartments after Housing Minister waters down standards
A senior Dublin City Council (DCC) planner conceded that they have concerns over the watering down of fire safety rules for apartment schemes in the capital.
Under old rules enforced by the authority’s planning section, apartment schemes were previously limited to a maximum of 12 apartments on each floor per ‘core’ - a fireproof section of the building containing a lift and stairs.
However, this limit was quashed by housing minister James Browne in July last year, as part of sweeping changes to apartment guidelines introduced to increase the viability of such schemes for developers.
Other changes include a reduction in the minimum size for a studio apartment, from 37 to 32 metres squared, fewer windows and less communal shared space, with the aim of reducing the cost of building an apartment by between €50,000 and €100,000.
Speaking to councillors in recent weeks, Brian Keaney, Acting Deputy City Planner with DCC, said the removal of the rule gives developers “more flexibility” with their apartment designs.
"However it obviously does raise concerns around quality and accessibility for fire safety,” he said. “And indeed amenity.”
Sinn Féin councillor Micheál MacDonncha said news that the updated apartment guidelines would have fire safety implications was “very, very alarming”, and asked Mr Keaney to elaborate.
“In relation to the ratio of stairs and lifts, that’s just something that’s struck ourselves in the planning department,” Mr Keaney said.
“Just to say that more cores, more stairs, generally facilitate a smaller number of units accessing them, so there are implications of that,” he said.
"I don’t see it working out in practice, where you’re getting large numbers of units being serviced by low numbers of cores or stairs, but again, it goes back to the development economics of this.”
He said more stairs and more cores make projects pricier for developers to build, as they also take away from the space that can be devoted to apartments.
"This is all driven by development economics,” he said.
Mr MacDonncha told the Irish Independent that the downgrading of standards was “alarming, especially when we are told it could have fire safety implications”.
"Many people in our city have had to deal with legacy fire safety defects. To see the Government compounding this is almost beyond belief,” he added.
His party colleague, Daithí Doolan, said the latest changes were part of a long-standing campaign by Government to reduce housing standards in the city.
When he was involved in drafting improved apartment standards for the capital in 2004 and 2005 as chair of the DCC Planning Committee, he said the aim was to create the “gold standard” in housing.
"There’s been an ongoing battle to maintain housing standards in Dublin,” he said. “[Former environment minister] Alan Kelly was able to reduce [standards] with the stroke of a pen, when he amended legislation going through Leinster House in 2015.
"He introduced an amendment that said that [developers] wouldn’t have to adhere to them, they could just refer to them … when I heard that, I thought ‘here we go, that’s the starting gun, now there’s going to be a race to the bottom’.”
Mr Doolan said apartment standards have continued to be progressively dismantled since then, culminating in the latest set of downgrades in July last year.
Dublin architect Mel Reynolds said he would “concur with the concerns”, and said many of the new apartment standards “haven’t really been thought through”.
"It’s very difficult for anyone in a state agency to start criticising another one, but these things have to be really carefully looked at to make sure that they work,” he said, adding that he doubts the fire safety changes would truly impact on viability.
Mr Reynolds assessed two housing schemes after former minister Kelly reduced apartment standards, and those wide-ranging changes saved a mere €600 per apartment.
"And with the most recent set of changes, it was very, very dubious with regards to what the saving was,” he said.
He said the removal of the limits per core could have fire safety implications, but added that there is a lot more to safety than simply the number of units accessing a core, and the “safety brake” of building regulations remains in place.
A spokesperson for the Department of Housing said the changes made to building requirements “will not compromise fire safety”.
"All aspects of the design of apartments and apartment schemes are required to comply with the relevant Building Regulations which are a set of legal requirements in Ireland, for the construction of new buildings (including apartments).”
The number of lift and stair cores in a scheme is primarily governed by a combination of building regulations and dual-aspect ratio requirements, they said, “particularly in relation to accessibility and fire safety”.
The spokesperson said the purpose of the changes “is to reduce costs and strike an effective regulatory balance, ensuring that apartment development meets the needs of society in terms of standards and quality, while promoting an increased level of output overall”.