SINN FÉIN HAS made moves to ban the controversial co-living developments that have been championed by Minister for Housing Eoghan Murphy. 

The party has today published a bill that proposes banning co-living developments by repealing an amendment to the Planning and Development Act that allows the housing minister to place specific planning policy requirements on local councils. 

Co-living developments have remained controversial despite the endorsement of Murphy. To critics, such developments are a return to tenement-style housing that do little to solve the housing crisis. 

“These mandatory guidelines have removed restrictions on apartment building heights, decreased apartment sizes, increased the permissible number of small studio apartments in a single development, increased the number of apartments per lift or stairwell in developments and reduced the number of dual aspect apartments per development,” Sinn Féin’s housing spokesperson Eoin Ó Broin said in a statement. 

The Dáil will not debate the bill until it returns from recess at the end of September. 

The bill, Ó Broin said, “will allow individual local authorities to determine the most appropriate planning frameworks for their county development plans. It would mean an end to the spectacle of co-living and other developer led changes made under Minister Murphy”. 

Murphy recently attracted criticism for comparing co-living spaces to living in a “very trendy” boutique hotel. 

Proposals for co-living developments at sites across Dublin have been widely criticised. Last month, An Bord Pleanála granted planning permission for a new development in Dún Laoghaire, with the proposed rent for these rooms set €1,300 per month.

The plan was described as “Dickensian” and rooms were compared to bedsits as the beds will fold up into the walls to save space.