The new Housing Minister has been slammed for not backing a new bill to ban co-living just a year after he called the cramped living pods “bonkers” himself.
Sinn Féin housing spokesman, Eoin Ó Broin, said: “If he thought it was bonkers in opposition, well surely he thinks it’s bonkers now he’s the minister.”
Laws currently allow for shared accommodation to be built with individual units as small as 12 square metres, about the size of a car parking space.
The new Minister for Housing, Darragh O’Brien, went on the attack against the concept in July last year when he was in opposition.
He said: “They should scrap co-living.
“If Leo Varadkar and Eoghan Murphy want this bonkers policy so much, they should co-live together.”
Mr O’Brien added: “They are not trendy boutique hotels (as former Minister for Housing, Eoghan Murphy, had described them), they are boxes, and we need to consider amendments to the 2000 Planning Act to change the regulations and stop more from being built.”
But now, he has promised a review of the planning guidelines instead.
Mr Ó Broin has now introduced a bill proposing the very changes to the laws Mr O’Brien called for last year.
He said he had raised the issue with the minister who could “remove it immediately...with the stroke of a pen”.
A spokesman for the minister said: “Minister O’Brien has asked the Department to carry out a review of co-living in order to assess any impact on purpose-built student accommodation.
“Minister O’Brien does not accept that co-living is a long-term housing solution and has committed to examining the best way forward in terms of housing and accommodation solutions.”
