Today with David McCullagh
'Shedsit’ garden flats could cause issues with housing in the future
27 Apr 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What new housing proposal did the government announce?
Last week, the government announced the introduction of new exemptions for modular homes. Tornished to Simon Harris said the proposal was a positive measure in a housing emergency. But some experts are concerned the plan hasn't been interrogated closely enough and could lead to a rental black market.
To discuss this in more detail, I'm joined by Senior Lecturer in Housing at the Technological University Dublin, Lorcan Sir. Lorcan, good morning to you. Morning, David. Now, we've heard from the government the pros of this plan, but you're more concerned about the cons. You're writing in the Irish Times about this. You say it could lead to an unpleasable black market.
Chapter 2: What concerns do experts have about the modular homes plan?
How so?
Yeah. Morning, David. Yeah. So what I'm keen to look at, really, when this idea came from lobbyists who suggested it could provide up to 350,000 homes in the country. And the politicians seem to jump on it fairly quickly. And I thought to myself, they're jumping on an idea very quickly. Building houses is not just a question of kind of putting down modular homes and walking away.
There's all sorts of kind of technical issues. There's legal issues. there's social issues, there's planning issues, and nobody seemed to be kind of looking at them. So I went on and I kind of picked the idea apart just under different headings to see what the issues are.
So the idea here is to quote the minister to remove bureaucracy and red tape, but I reckon, you know, that it'll end up kind of creating more bureaucracy and red tape. So there was very little research done around building regulations, particularly, say, for access for disabled people or ventilation regulations.
Fire safety, if you think about back gardens and terraced houses, how fire brigades are supposed to get to that and how people are supposed to escape if there's a fire. Infrastructure, sewage and water capacity, we're already at 99% in large urban areas.
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Chapter 3: How might modular homes lead to a rental black market?
And then things like parking and overlooking the parking in particular, David, I think could be very much a point of contention. And all these things like the title, the mortgage provider, I mean, does the mortgage provider have an issue with you adding on to the, you know, an extra structure in your back garden?
And if the structure is not properly built, if you go to sell the house, that could create a planning issue, which means the mortgage provider is then involved because there's a risk there. But also there's the idea that, you know, these can be plonked up really. And I know the government say that, you know, people will have to notify the local authority.
But I mean, who's to say that they will or they won't? And if not, and particularly with the, you know, the rental room scheme being applied to this, you can earn 14,000 a year tax free and then rent out. On top of that, I mean, if nobody knows they're there, there's a huge potential, I think, for a kind of a black-marketed cash economy. And we've seen this in other countries.
I've seen this in Eastern and Central Europe and even down in Spain. I've seen this before, people putting up. ostensibly temporary structures, but charging cash rent and never declaring it.
Okay, but we are assured by the government that the building regulations will be imposed, so they'll be up to standard, that they'll have to, as you say, they'll have to be notified to the planning authority and that they will check things like access and access to sewage and so on. So the government are talking a good game anyway in terms of how this will be policed.
They are. Of course, all that is more bureaucracy and red tape, so to say, with the very thing they said this was going to cut back. And of course, the critical thing here is that the people who stay in these, you know, these modular rooms at the back of houses aren't actually going to be tenants. So there's no requirement to register with the Residential Tenancies Board, for example.
Nobody will have access to, they won't have access to dispute resolution mechanisms, you know, if there's a row with your landlord or there's a dispute between landlord and tenant. And also it means, and this is a point that nobody has kind of picked up on, as a licensee, you have the same rights as if you go and stay in a hotel or a B&B.
So people will know that if you go to a hotel, like the chamber staff or the cleaning staff can come into your room, the hotel manager can come into your room, just knock on the door and let themselves in. And that's the kind of relationship you have as staying in a hotel or a B&B. You're a licensee.
And people who are staying in these modular homes are now going to be licensees, which means that the owner of the building or the owner of the modular home can knock and enter any time they want. And they can also turf you out with absolutely no notice. So I think that's going to create a lot of problems as well. The idea that, you know, the person who lives in the house
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Chapter 4: What technical and legal issues are associated with modular homes?
I mean, that could be OK because you would assume there'd be no rent changing hands and also the number of people wouldn't change. So there'd be no extra capacity, no extra load on the water, the sewage, for example, still before people there, you know. And that potentially has potential.
But the idea that you open it up now so that it's going to be part of the rental market and you could see, you know, huge numbers of extra people descending on areas and moving in as licensees with their cars and everything else. I mean, I think that was problematic.
I think the government kind of got a little bit greedy about this, whereas if they had left it as being just suitable for family members, I think that it potentially would have had a role there. But letting it kind of loose on the private rental sector,
as a kind of a legitimate form of somewhere for people to live, as not a tenant but a licensee, I think that's where the problems are going to start.
In terms of numbers, Lorcan, do you expect this to lead to thousands rather than tens of thousands or certainly not hundreds of thousands of modular homes in back gardens?
Yeah, I mean, I think like if you're to buy a modular home, there are, I don't know, about 120,000. So it's for people who have that access to that kind of money for a start. It's also for people who have access to enough space in the garden. So when you put in one of these things, you still have to leave 25 square metres of, you know, grass area or back garden area.
So there'll be two types of people, I suspect, who might be interested in this. One is people who have money to do this. And if they have that kind of money, they perhaps don't want the hassle of having a modular home in the back garden anyway.
Or else there'll be people who just do, get their load of pallets and insulation and stuff out of skips and make their own shanty town ones in their back garden. And I'd be very worried about those. But I mean, I can't see, it's definitely not going to create up to 350,000 homes. As the lobbyists claimed, it'll be far, far less.
If indeed, it'd be interesting to see how many, you know, we won't actually know how many people really, I suspect,
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Chapter 5: What are the potential implications of modular homes on urban infrastructure?
Today's programme was produced by series producer Niamh Lyons. Research was by Cormac Burke. Broadcast coordinator is Michelle Gibson. And Paul Murnock was on sound. Oliver Callan is coming up.