Oh, oh. Well, hold on a moment. Pull up a chair. There are no memes today and no toys in this sack. Instead, we are focusing solely on the facts. My old friend Rick asked me to record this as he is currently far, far away from his podcast studio. So let's begin. In August 2019, Twin Light, along with a co-investor, bought a parcel of land romantically known as Sector 3, Aikens Village. Step aside, Dublin 18. Six years later, in December 2025, this site remains vacant and undeveloped. The economic cost of this non-development, to the people who would live there, to twinlight as developers, and to the state in terms of taxes, is significant. Developers like them are regularly accused of land hoarding, and from the outside, it might look like that is what is going on with this site. But the reality is much more complex. This particular site is an example which shows how difficult it is to navigate the planning system. This site is not hugely controversial. There are no Brent geese, no reindeer. But it has still proven very difficult to build on. This isn't a rage bait post. Rick wants me to emphasize that he bears no ill will towards the cast of characters involved in this story. No one has broken the law. No one is on the naughty list, except maybe the entire government. Everyone has played their part. It's just that this isn't a drama. It's a farce. Chapter Zero. What are you talking about? The site is 2.92 hectares. It sits in the middle of a housing development called Aikens Village, itself beside the small village of Stepperside in South Dublin. Aikens Village was mostly developed during the boom. But the bit we are talking about was actually built after the crash. So it included fairly modern low density housing. Remember when there was so little demand for housing that you could build low density beside a Lewis stop? Way back in the 2000s? For one, I prefer high density, elevators rather than chimneys, though with Ozempic, the chimneys aren't as much of a problem anymore. I digress. The site is less than one thousand meters away from the Glencairn Lewis Stop. Remember that children because it is an important detail for later. It is close to the M fifty and sits in the foothills of the Dublin Mountains. It's a nice area, suburban, trees, all that kind of thing. Chapter one. It already had fucking planning permission. When Twin Light bought the land it had planning permission already granted for 243 apartments and duplexes in eleven blocks, along with two underground car parks with 342 parking spaces. There was also a crash. This planning permission was sought by the previous owner and was granted in 2016 by Dunleary Rathdown County Council. But this permission wasn't really suitable for what TwinLight wanted to do. It was very inefficient in its design, a lot of common floor area relative to actual residential floor area, and wasn't maximizing the area of the site, so. They went back in with a new application in November 2019 for 444 apartments. This eliminated surface car parking and increased the heights of some of the blocks on the southern end of the site. The site slopes to the south. This application was lodged under the old so-called fast track planning rules known as the Strategic Housing Development or SHD guidelines. And Board Planala, ABP as it was known then, was minded to grant planning permission for this new design. But right before the decision was issued, Irish Water sent a letter to ABP, which mistakenly suggested there was no capacity to accommodate the water and wastewater needs of the development. As a result, ABP had no choice but to refuse permission. Irish Water later confirmed there was in fact capacity. This application, which was refused in April 2020, is called Ironborn SHD 1. The application fee that was paid to ABP was around 60,000 euro. The design team fees were 275,000 euro. Chapter 2. Let's try again. TwinLite retooled the design and team and submitted a second application, which we will call Ironborn SHD II in March 2021. Another fee of 61,557 euro and twenty-eight cents was paid to ABP. This application was made under the build to rent rules and was for one apartment more than the previous scheme, 445 in total, along with the crash, etc. The build to rent rules required that they legally guarantee the apartments could only be used for rent for a period of 15 years from their completion. This time, Irish Water confirmed the development could go ahead, as long as TwinLight built a holding tank for them. To cater for, and I'm not joking, excess drainage volume coming from illegal drainage connections from nearby lands, and to cater for future demand from developments that haven't been applied for or built yet. That might be a surprise to some of you. But Irish Water, who in fairness are starved of funding since they can't charge their customers for the product they produce, routinely require developers to build future infrastructure for them in exchange for getting a connection. So, TwinLight agreed to the tank, and DLR County Council graciously agreed to host this tank, which is underground, in a location where Irish Water wanted it. Extra presence for DLR that year. The application was thus granted by ABP in July 2021. Hooray! Twin Light had the equity and debt lined up to construct the building. Even the construction contract had been signed. They were ready to go. Chapter three. Judicial Review Number One. On September 6, 2021, a group of nearby residents sought and were granted leave to have the High Court review the planning decision that ABP made. Judicial reviews are not well understood by the general public, which is no surprise since the general public almost never has to interact with one. So, a quick primer. Judicial reviews of planning decisions aren't meant to question the merits of the planning decision. Instead, they are meant to question the legality of the decision. So the court has no business figuring out whether or not a decision was a good one. They are not meant to opine on the height of the building or its design. Just whether or not the party making the decision, the state, via ABP, did so lawfully. Obviously, interpreting the law is a matter for the courts, and the courts are run by judges who are humans and have differing opinions on the law. Twinlight had now owned the site for two years, and still hadn't gotten started with building anything. The judicial review was eventually heard by the High Court in September 2023, two years after the planning permission was granted, and the court quashed the permission on a couple of different grounds. It is complicated, so I have to summarize here. First, the report on daylight and sunlight that was submitted with the application didn't specifically outline what mitigation was being planned for apartments that didn't meet the threshold requirements. Almost all apartments have to meet the threshold. In this case it was above ninety percent. Not every apartment has to reach this threshold, however. It would be next to impossible to achieve this unless they were all glass, or all face the south or west, or didn't have any balconies. More on that later. The apartments that don't meet the threshold have to have mitigation. You and I know what mitigation is. Lights. Turns out, if the report doesn't specifically say that there will be lights in the area of the apartment that doesn't get enough daylight, then the planning authority is precluded from assuming there will be lights. Therefore, the decision to grant planning permission is unlawful, because they made an assumption instead of relying on the applicant to specify that they were indeed going to put lights inside. Second, the court also said that there was no substantiation of there being sufficient public transport capacity to service the development once it was built. This is a chicken and egg situation. So permit me a short thought experiment to explain this further. Say you wanted to build one thousand apartments in the middle of nowhere, and for whatever reason there happened to be a train line with a station right in the middle of this middle of nowhere site. The government wants you to build the apartments because they need apartments and figure people can commute using the train line. However, until the apartments are actually built, the train company isn't going to run any trains to the station, because there will be no one to use them. In this case, how do you substantiate the public transport capacity in your planning application? As it stands, the public transport capacity is zero, because there are no trains running. The planning application included a traffic and transport assessment prepared by ACOM, who are one of the biggest engineering firms in the world. The assessment is one hundred and thirty pages long. In addition to doing detailed trip analysis, it also repeatedly points out that the tram stop was 900 meters away. And that Transport for Ireland had announced the trams were being extended from 40 meters to 55 meters in length to increase capacity. These trams were due into operation in 2021. And surprisingly, they were in operation in 2021. The court did not find that the analysis was sufficient in terms of proving there was capacity on public transport, meaning ABP could not have lawfully concluded there was sufficient public transport capacity. This has implications for any planned development that is not already served by transport over and above the needs of the existing population, which is obviously not common. The last reason the judge gave was that the planning authority, ABP, didn't correctly articulate the reasons why it believed the public open space that was designed into the development didn't contravene the DLR development plan. To be clear, the open space plan design did contravene the development plan, as it is allowed to under national planning guidelines. And reasons were given for it in the material contravention statement. Again, the court is not saying those reasons are invalid. It is saying that ABP didn't state its rationale for agreeing with the reasons. The court quashed the permission, or so it seemed. So, back to the drawing board. Chapter 4. But wait, wasn't there already planning permission? Yes. Before all of this saga began, there was the not great permission that was granted in 2016. When it became clear that getting planning was going to be a real headache on this site, Twin Light figured maybe they would just go build the existing permission. Sure it was flawed and inefficient, but it was better than what they had in that moment. Which was nothing. Not even a lump of coal in their stocking. Ho. Oh, no. There was a catch, though. The permission was granted in 2016. It was already three years old when they bought the land, and thus only had two years left to run before it expired. In 2021 they sought to extend the permission, something that was normally allowed. But no. In Ireland, apparently builders only ever extended planning permissions because they were hoarding land, so the ability to do this was removed for all but exceptional reasons. The Minister for Housing is going on the naughty list for that. They applied to DLR County Council for an extension, and it was refused. What were their reasons? They didn't believe Twin Light were going to build the development they were seeking the extension on. Mr Big, bad builder, must be hoarding the land. Twin Light didn't believe that was a valid reason. So thinking they were entitled to the same technical reasoning the courts take with everyone else, they sought a judicial review of DLR's decision to refuse the extension. This was also heard in 2023. And guess what? They lost. The judge said it was entirely reasonable for DLR County Council to take the view that the development wouldn't be completed during the extension that was sought. The judgment was silent on just how TwinLight go about proving ahead of time that they are going to build it. So, in this sorry tale, we are now back to square minus one, with no valid planning permission at all. Chapter 5. Stepping back in time a little to 2022. A mere three years after Twin Light bought the land, they had to come up with a plan E. At this stage the first judicial review hadn't even been heard yet, but the omens didn't look good for it. Thank you, Atlantic Diamond. You can Google it, and no, it's not really about diamonds. So back into the design team, and another several hundred thousand euro later. There was yet another application, which we shall call Ironborn SHD 3. Yet another transfer to ABP for sixty odd thousand Euro. This time the design featured four hundred twenty-two units, with some balconies removed to completely solve the daylight issue, and yes, they explicitly stated they would also install lights. This application was lodged in September 2022 and was granted in October 2023. The same group of residents again sought a judicial review of this decision. And that case was finally heard this year, with the judgment coming out last week. Once again, the permission was quashed. This time, because they had removed the balconies from the development to improve daylight, which you will recall, was a problem from the last decision. Removing the balconies was contrary to the DLR County Council development plan, which requires a balcony on every apartment. The judge said that there was no special reason for the balconies to be removed, and so the application was contrary to the development plan and was therefore quashed. It should be noted that the government recently published national guidelines allowing the removal of some balconies. These guidelines were also challenged by way of judicial review. This Christmas there really is a judicial review for everyone. Chapter six Remittal If you listen this far, thank you, and you'll be glad to know this is where the story finally gets interesting. In the first judicial review, when the court quashed the decision for Ironborn SHD II, the assumption was that our protagonists were back to the start. It subsequently emerged that the judge had decided that ABP should have to consider the case afresh and make a new decision. So he remitted the case back to ABP for review. ABP told Twinlight a decision was due in January 2025. At the time of recording this, that decision had not issued. Admittedly, the Postal Service to the North Pole is very busy at the moment, so it's possible I have missed it. It appears clear from the judgment on Ironborn SHD 3 that a similar result will arise, with the judge remitting the application back to ABP to make a fresh decision. Hopefully this time a lawful one. But children, all this leads to a bit of a conundrum. As ABP have not yet made a decision on the remitted application, Ironborn SHD II, it is now likely that they will be considering both applications at the same time. And if that wasn't enough, there's more. Chapter 7. May the Fourth Be With You. In the intervening several years since this story began, a lot of things changed. The government became hostile to foreign direct investment in housing and brought in a myriad of new and largely stupid rules designed to make the housing market less interesting to foreign investors. This all happened at the same time that Russia unlawfully invaded Ukraine, which led to a bout of general inflation but particularly in construction. The inflation accelerated already rising interest rates. These things all conspired to make the development twinlight were planning considerably less attractive to outside investors. This project would have consumed close to 165 million euro in capital, and nobody writes that kind of a check unless the risk reward calculus. Is good. Not even S Clause Capital. By early 2024, still in limbo, waiting for the outcome of the second judicial review, Twin Lights started down the road of yet another planning application. This time they pursued a low-rise, high-density scheme under the new large-scale residential planning process. The successor to the SHD. This design for 209 own door units was lodged in August 2025 and a decision is due shortly. It is the fifth planning application on the site in nine years. Coda. A couple of things. Rick wants me to again point out that he doesn't blame any of the various characters involved in this story. Twin Light bought the land, they took the risk. The residents exercised the rights given to them under law. The courts carried out their role, and the judges decided based on what they believe to be correct, and ultimately he lost out. But as I say to Mrs. Claws when she is chiding me for the mess in the kitchen, that is the way the cookie crumbles. Nobody can say that any of those people involved are the reason this project has failed to happen. Nothing underhanded happened. Nobody got special treatment. In that sense. The system worked. In another sense, though, the system failed miserably. The Irish state would have benefited financially from the project. The development contributions alone on this project would have been more than seven million euros paid directly to DLR County Council in 2023 terms, probably closer to eight million in current value. That is a lot of toys for the children. Central government would have collected close to thirty million in VAT paid on the completed project, and four hundred and twenty-two households would have had somewhere to live. And that is a lot of customers for Santa and a lot of carrots for Rudolph. Some of you might point out that the expensive apartments Twin Light were planning to build weren't exactly going to solve homelessness, and you're right. Except you're also wrong. Because those four hundred twenty two households now live somewhere else, and that displaces four hundred twenty-two other households to somewhere else, and on and on down the ladder. Housing is expensive because it is scarce. Expensive housing does contribute significantly to homelessness. There is a problem with the planning system. It does need to be fixed. You can blame developers for small errors in planning applications that are often twelve thousand pages long. You can blame ABP for not explicitly justifying their reasoning for every single decision in enough words to satisfy lawyers. And you can even take issue with the involvement of private capital in the supply of housing altogether, and believe it shouldn't happen. That's all fine. But in passing that blame you are suggesting nothing should change. And if you are leaving this system the way it currently is, nothing is also going to change in terms of the supply of housing or in terms of the cost of it. Years will go by, land will lie vacant, and meanwhile, people will be living in damp B and B's, B emigrating, or be trying to get the ride in their childhood bedroom if they are lucky enough to have one, while their parents try to sleep in an adjacent room. Certainly not what I want to have to deal with when delivering presents. The consequences of this are serious, and they are long term. But by all means, go ahead and lay the blame at the door of the developers. That strategy has been working really well for the last decade. The infrastructure plan is a good first step, so in a rare show of support, I tip my Santa hat to the current government. I'll be making a list to see who follows through, though, and I'll be checking it twice. Happy Christmas to all and to all. A good night. P.S. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider subscribing. It's completely free, and there are a large number of episodes that break down some of the reasons there is a housing shortage in Ireland. But even if you don't want to ever listen again, please consider donating to Focus Ireland this Christmas. You can do so at their website, focusireland.ie. The build is normally hosted by Rick Larkin. Special guest host on this episode is Santa Claus. The views expressed in this and previous podcasts are personal to the individual guests and do not necessarily represent the views of their employers. Copyright 2025, Rick Larkin.