The small amount of new houses being built.... houses on top of houses, no space anywhere.

the average single-family home is now just 216 sqm floor area (down 24 sqm since 2011), while scheme houses scrape by at 119 sqm and apartments at a ridiculous 72 sqm.

What is the source for these numbers? All bar the apartment seem larger than AVG.

I kinda see your point, but generally people dont want big gardens to maintain, family life, two people working, and children in a creche. Land for housing is very expensive in Ireland. Rezoning can make people millionaires or even billionaires at this stage. There are many towns outside the very big urban areas where there are developments with generous gardens and garages, they tend to be very expensive.

Later in the post they specify a minimum plot size of 400m², so I think the figures are for habital space. In which case, they are way off average home size, and they have not come back with the source for them.

When people here have the chance, mostly the rural one off houses, they build boring, bland boxes. No personality. Or they copy a ‘traditional’ style but make the house so big that it looks ridiculous.

Couple that with ‘tarmac all the way around’ the house and you have these dull McMansions sitting on their own roundabout. Add a cherry laurel hedge, non native grass seed and the rest of the accoutrements of a one off house built here in the last 30 years and you have an eyesore and environmental disaster on a half acre in the countryside.

No other countries seem to be as bad as this; American, South African, German, French; these houses all look at least a bit unique. Why are we saddled with such awful housing and why do we have to endure it?

Sounds like you've never seen a French housing estate. Try this proposed site, for example (north of Paris, in the Somme département):

Germany's not much better, and the Germans (and Swiss) are really fond of their boxy, flat-roofed houses too.

The French example above, as with so many "beyond-the-pale" Irish developments do everything to encourage continued car dependency for no particular advantage. The traditional "family home" doesn't really have any place in Western society any more, seeing as few of us live in a "traditional" family any more.

Building up makes much more sense than building out and if the internal walls/floors/ceilings are done properly, you wouldn't even notice you had neighbours. That's where Ireland lags so far behind the rest of Europe. Half a dozen proper skyscrapers down around Ringsend (to include accessible public spaces and rent-controlled apartments of two to four bedrooms) would quickly solve most of Dublin's accommodation problems and ease the pressure on the hinterland.

There is lots of space to build on, but we really need to adopt building up philosophy.

Never mind front and back gardens I really do question the need for balconies in so many(possibly all) apartments. It is a space that is really only usable about 3-4 months a year if that.

Before anyone attacks for suggesting I ban balconies, I am just saying we need to build places that suit everyone, and many people dont need a balcony. I am sure many people would prefer having a park to walk in over the 2 metre by 1 metre outside space that comes with their apartment and ultimately they are paying for.

Never mind front and back gardens I really do question the need for balconies in so many(possibly all) apartments. It is a space that is really only usable about 3-4 months a year if that.

That probably stems from so many Irish people always having had the back garden (or a field) available, and living in bungalows or two-storey houses. We never learnt how to use balconies in the same way as the Continentals do. So they're added to new builds as a photogenic selling point, with little real consideration of how they can/could be used all year 'round if they were better designed.

...

it’s no excuse for the horrendous gardens and painting your house battleship grey. And tarmacing as much as humanly possible.

I spent a few nights in a 2-bed apt, either 62 or 68sqm.

While it wasn't very tight, there was just one living room, i.e. the kitchen and sitting room were all the one.

Sure how could a couple or family live like that long-term, need some personal space.

I have 150 sqm at the moment, four bedrooms, and it's okay, but the utility room is full!!!!

More than once, including where I live now, Ive wished the balcony had a kind of temporary conservatory type windows on the balconey, It could be a pleasant place to have tea and toast in the morning, even when its freezing cold outside or raining as is often the case. It could be a useful place to dry clothes, and speaking as someone who grows plants I could use it for that too or as well. Instead, all the balconeys I've had have been basically an outisde area in the wind and rain, with no way of closing it off or covering it, or protecting it from rain.

And as I said its another 3-4 square metres that I am ultimately paying for.

my friends in France have done thís. Closed in the balcony with windows that open not glasa but perspex or something similar. It can be done.