The Revised National Planning Framework (NPF) was finalised and approved by Government and the Oireachtas in April 2025. The Revised NPF identifies the need to plan for approximately 50,000 additional households per annum to 2040.
To ensure that local authority development plans reflect the requirements of the NPF in respect of housing as soon as possible, I issued the NPF Implementation: Housing Growth Requirements Guidelines under section 28 of the Planning and Development Act 2000 in July 2025. These Guidelines set out the housing demand scenario to 2040 for each local authority, by translating the NPF housing requirements into average annual figures and set out the requirement for planning authorities to commence the process of varying their development plan to meet the new housing growth requirements.
The housing demand scenario is aligned to the ‘50:50 cities’ distribution in the National Planning Framework. The national target set out in the Revised NPF also includes a provision for ‘unmet demand’ and it is an objective of the Guidelines that this unmet demand will be addressed in the near term, up to the year 2034, subject to monitoring of the implementation of the NPF.
The housing distribution at local authority level is based on the NPF 50:50 City scenario, which in turn is built on the NPF aim to achieve more regionally balanced population growth, split roughly 50:50 between the Eastern and Midland Region, and the rest of the Country (i.e. the Southern Region and Northern and Western Region).
The new housing growth requirements are set out in Appendix 1 to the Guidelines in the form of an annual housing figure for each local authority and provide, on average, a 60% increase on the housing figures issued under the 2020 Guidelines, i.e. to planning for an annual average output of c.55,000 new homes per annum over and above the current target of 33,000.
The current adopted Development Plans for the 31 local authorities already reflect, in many cases, the inclusion of ‘additional provision’ in relation to housing and land use zoning, with the result that the initial annual housing target of c.33,000 dwellings per annum, as set out in the Housing Supply Target Methodology/Guidelines in 2020, has been translated in to a cumulative annual target of c.48,000 in adopted plans. As a result, the 2025 Guidelines incorporate the current core strategy figures as published by local authorities within city/county development plans (CDPs) as a starting point. Accordingly, each the baseline figure for each local authority is at least the same at the current CDP target.
For local authorities where delivery against the current CDP targets has been relatively strong (at or in excess of 50%) over the past three years, the baseline figures have been adjusted upwards (for the period to 2034) to reflect this, with proportional allocation of the difference between the c.48,000 in adopted plans and the c.55,000 national figures distributed between the relevant local authorities. This approach ensures that additional growth figures are targeted, in the near term, in areas with the greatest likelihood of housing delivery.
In addition to the baseline housing growth requirement, planning authorities have also been requested to address the scope for additional provision of up to 50% in excess of the baseline housing growth requirement, in light of the urgent need to increase housing delivery and to optimise the ability to deliver on the housing requirements of the Revised NPF. This approach recognises the fact that, for a variety of reasons, a relatively significant proportion of zoned lands are not activated over the period of a development plan.
