LAUSR

The approach to this demographic-based paper on housing comprises a demand-led perspective to spatial planning and housing provision. The principal arguments are that end-use demand is driven by demographic growth and that successful planning is predicated on sustainable market-led implementation. Accordingly, the thrust and direction of Ireland’s National Planning Framework (NPF) must be driven by rational responses to population projections, its growthdriver of job creation, and anticipating the primary locations of future employment and for city-led end-use demand. Since 2006 Ireland’s potential to invest in capital formation has been handicapped by state economic constraints. In the intervening decade its Fixed Capital Formation, or Gross Domestic Fixed Capital Formation (GDFCF), collapsed from 24 per cent of GDP to low single-digit figures of circa 3 per cent in 2013. Despite its recovery to date, the building industry continues to be under-funded and undercapitalised. A ‘normal’ national (public and private) capital spend is about 12 per cent of GDP, about twice the current annual level of