What the Department's National Planning Statement of 4 September 2026 requires, what it leaves to judgement, and what it will mean for every apartment application decided after it issues.
The Planning Design Standards for Apartments National Planning Statement is the first apartment standard to be issued under section 25 of the Planning and Development Act 2024. It replaces the Design Standards for Apartments, Guidelines for Planning Authorities, issued in July 2025 under section 28 of the 2000 Act. A first draft was consulted on from 9 June to 7 July 2026 and drew 58 submissions; the amended draft was published on 14 September 2026 with a revised Strategic Environmental Assessment report, and submissions on it close at 5.30pm on 12 October 2026.
The Department is candid about the purpose. The revised National Planning Framework requires planning for about 50,000 homes a year to 2040; apartment delivery is where the viability gap is widest; and the Statement is meant to "strike an effective regulatory balance" between standards and output. The ministerial forewords say the same thing in plainer terms. Read it as a document about cost first and amenity second, and the individual measures make sense.
Two lines in Chapter 1 matter more than anything in the tables. The Statement "applies to any application for planning permission that is determined after the issuing of this NPS", so a scheme lodged under the 2025 guidelines will be decided under the Statement if the decision comes after it issues. And within two months of issue every planning authority and regional assembly must report to the Office of the Planning Regulator on whether its plan is materially consistent with the National Planning Policies and Measures, and if not, how it will remove the inconsistency.
Section 25 splits a National Planning Statement into two parts. National Planning Policies and Measures (NPPMs) are the part every development plan must be "materially consistent" with. National Planning Policy Guidance is the part plans must "take due account of". Under the 2025 guidelines the equivalent split was between Specific Planning Policy Requirements and the rest; section 27 of the 2024 Act carries the old SPPRs forward with the force of NPPMs until they are replaced, which this Statement will do.
The practical effect is that a development plan objective which contradicts an NPPM will have to be varied out, and in the meantime a decision-maker applying the NPPM is applying national policy, not contravening the plan. The 2025 guidelines could be, and were, argued around at appeal. The Statement is harder to argue around, which is exactly why the consultation is worth engaging with now.
The minimum areas are unchanged from the 2025 guidelines for the studio, one-bed and two-bed types. The three-bed four-person unit at 76 m² is a type the guidelines did not have; it sits between the two-bed four-person unit and the 90 m² three-bed and is the Department's answer to the cost of three-bed apartments, which the text singles out as the type most damaging to viability. The Statement also sets the studio at 32 m² expressly to allow "mix and match" modular construction alongside the 63 m² two-bed three-person unit.
| Unit type | Minimum area | Living room width | Storage | Private amenity |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Studio (1 person) | 32 m² | 4.0 m | 3 m² | 4 m² |
| One bedroom (2 persons) | 45 m² | 3.3 m | 3 m² | 5 m² |
| Two bedroom (3 persons) | 63 m² | 3.6 m | 5 m² | 6 m² |
| Two bedroom (4 persons) | 73 m² | 3.6 m | 6 m² | 7 m² |
| Three bedroom (4 persons) | 76 m² | 3.8 m | 6 m² | 7 m² |
| Three bedroom (5 persons) | 90 m² | 3.8 m | 9 m² | 9 m² |
Widths and bedroom areas carry a 5% tolerance. Communal amenity space is set at the same per-unit figures as private amenity space. None of the Appendix 1 figures other than the overall areas in NPPM 2 are binding; they are "recommended minimum" guidance.
The rule that at least 25% of units should exceed the minimum by 10% survives as guidance, with the Statement inviting more than 25% in suburban schemes, social and Part V housing and older persons' housing. It does not apply to schemes under ten units, to refurbishment of existing buildings on any site, or to urban infill on sites up to 0.25 hectares, and for ten to 49 units it may be reduced or removed case by case.
A pattern runs through Chapters 3 and 4. For "building refurbishment schemes on sites of any size or urban infill schemes on sites of up to 0.25 ha" a planning authority may, subject to overall design quality, go below 25% dual aspect, relax the 2.7 m ground-floor height, relax storage in part, relax private amenity space further, and relax communal amenity space in part or in whole. Together with section 2.5, which asks authorities to apply the Statement "practically and flexibly" to over-the-shop and historic building conversions, and the 2025 exemption for change of use of vacant commercial upper floors (S.I. 648 of 2025), this is the most consequential part of the document for anyone holding a town-centre building.
The threshold is worth memorising. A quarter of a hectare is 2,500 m². A great many town and city centre sites fall under it, and on those sites the Statement hands the authority discretion on almost every amenity standard it contains.
Children's play is retained as guidance: a small play space of 85 to 100 m² in schemes of 25 or more units with two or more bedrooms, and a play area of 200 to 400 m² in schemes of 100 or more such units. Read that against Abbey Park Residents v An Coimisiún Pleanála [2026] IEHC 365, decided in June, where a 104-unit grant was quashed for an unidentified contravention of a development plan objective requiring 4 m² of play space per unit. The Statement's play guidance is softer than Fingal's objective was; whether a plan objective of that kind survives the material-consistency test under NPPM 6 is a question the consultation should ask, because the Statement only forbids plans from requiring communal, community and cultural facilities on a threshold basis, and play space is not clearly in that category.
Car parking is left to the Sustainable Residential Development and Compact Settlement Guidelines 2024 (SPPR 3 maximum rates), with the Statement adding that ratios should be "minimised, substantially reduced or wholly eliminated" at accessible locations, that car-free development is permissible, and that accessible spaces should be leased on need rather than sold with units. Bicycle parking is likewise cross-referred to SPPR 4 of those guidelines, with a new emphasis on a funded maintenance regime. Waste storage now cites the EPA's May 2026 report on food waste from apartments for design.
Co-living keeps the presumption against that has applied since 2020, now with a Housing Need and Demand Assessment as the only route through. Student accommodation gets its own chapter and NPPM for the first time. The Statement adopts the standards of the Department of Further and Higher Education's Design Guide for State Sponsored Student Accommodation 2025, applies them to private schemes, and prevents development plans from adding to them. An 8 m² study bedroom without an en-suite is the headline; it will be argued over.
Chapter 7 asks for a schedule with every application: the mix and bedspaces, the area of each unit, which units exceed the minimum by 10% in schemes of ten or more, private and communal amenity including play, storage inside and outside each unit, and the aspect and, for single-aspect units, the orientation of every unit. Drawings are to show the principal dimensions and area of every room. A costed building lifecycle report is expected, and conditions requiring compliance with the Multi-Unit Developments Act 2011, an owners' management company and a sinking fund are recommended. Daylight is referred out to section 5.3.7 of the 2024 settlement guidelines.
Three things stand out. First, the Statement converts what were arguable guidelines into national policy that development plans must match within two months, and it applies to applications already in the system on the day it issues. Anyone with an apartment application lodged this autumn should assume it will be decided under the Statement and should check the schedule in Chapter 7 now.
Second, the 0.25 hectare infill relaxations, taken together, are a different regime for small urban sites. They are discretionary, so the quality of the design case will decide whether the discretion is exercised, but the direction is unmistakable and it favours the building owner over the objector.
Third, the relationship with development plans is not fully worked out. NPPM 6 stops threshold-based demands for community facilities; it does not obviously stop a quantified play-space objective, and the courts have just shown what an unidentified contravention of one of those costs. The Department could settle this in the final text with a sentence. That is the submission we would make.
For the alteration route the Planning and Development (Amendment) Act 2026 opened for uncommenced apartment permissions, and how it interacts with these standards, see our comparison of the Acts.
Submissions go by email to nrupconsultation@housing.gov.ie or by post to National Strategic Planning, Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Custom House, Dublin 1, D01 W6X0, by 5.30pm on 12 October 2026. Cite the NPPM or section number you are addressing, say what you want changed and why, and give evidence where you have it; the Department publishes submissions, so leave out anything personal or commercially sensitive. If you would like us to prepare one for a scheme, a site or a representative body, ask.
We will tell you how the Statement bears on it, and whether the 2026 Act's alteration route is worth using before Part 4 commences.