Why don’t Irish people want to live in apartments? Only 13 per cent of Irish households live in the country’s 230,000 flats or apartments. In Europe, nearly half of all households live in an apartment or flat.

But there are logical reasons for our reluctance.

Historically, flats were regarded with suspicion. In a 1932 edition of the Jesuit journal Studies, Fr Fergal McGrath warned that “flat life is an unnatural thing” and “in line with the philosophy of communism”. He warned we should avoid dotting the city with “large barracks of propertyless men”. By the end of the 1940s, twice as many houses as flats had been built by Dublin Corporation and other urban authorities.

The public experience of the flawed Ballymun experiment in the 1970s and 1980s did not inspire faith in living in flats. Shoddy construction and fire safety issues in new apartments in the 1990s and 2000s were another – self-inflicted – nail in the coffin for “European apartment living” that taxpayers and owners are still paying for.

Renters forking out €2,000 per month are paying the price for water charges debacle

Hitting target of 41,000 homes to be built this year will be ‘challenging’, Minister for Housing admits

Holiday homeowners underestimate at their peril the anger among those locked out of the housing market

Water utility warns on reforms needed for housing targets: ‘The scale of the task is immense’

The Multi-Unit Development Act 2011 regulating communal residential complexes has serious flaws, particularly around the collection of unpaid service charges, inadequate sinking funds and the operation of the owners’ management companies.

The political impetus to encourage apartment development has been a desire to attract international landlords for whom smaller, lower-standard apartments yield more profit – while housing fewer people. Apartment standards have........

© The Irish Times