MAI N FE ATURE Hugh Wallace, Director, Douglas Wallace Associates.
“ We n e e d t o ha v e a c o nv e r s a t io n a b o u t n e w b u ild s a n d b u ild in g in s u b u rb ia ” Architect HUGH WALLACE tells Mimi Murray that Housing for All is yet another lofty document that claims to have all the answers when the real problem is a broken planning system that the government won’t address.
16 irishconstructionnews December 2021
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ousing for All is an ambitious government plan to deliver 33,000 residential units a year up to 2030. While it has been welcomed by many, others are more sceptical of what the plan can deliver or achieve in that time. Director of Douglas Wallace Associates and judge on RTE’s popular Home of the Year television show, Hugh Wallace is in the latter camp. He describes Housing for All as “yet another lofty document” that will have little chance of success unless several factors change or are reformed to speed up the planning process and the delivery of developments. “You only have to look at the other
documents issued in relation to the rural regeneration of Ireland,” Hugh Wallace explains. “My issue with these documents is that they follow on from a series of other lofty documents, and what we need now is action. Moreover, the main problem is a planning process that is broken. “Our practice would have been involved in a number of projects where we engaged with local authority planning departments and got a direction which we went down. The planner then changed in the middle of the process, and the new planner’s interpretation differed from the last person. So, instead of being able to enter into discussion with the planning department (it’s not permitted
