A Labour Senator has slammed the government for "relaxing building standards" as the number of shared developments continues to increase in Dublin.

Senator Kevin Humphreys criticised the shared properties as "unacceptable modern homes", and called for more "real homes" in the capital.

This comes after a recent development proposal in Dun Laoghaire, which, despite previous approval for 59 apartments, has seen the developer opt to make room for 200 bed spaces.

Mr Humphreys said: "We have a housing crisis in Dublin with not enough public, social and affordable housing being built. The solution pursued by Fine Gael has been to relax building standards and enable the development of thousands of student accommodations units, and new co-living complexes that are simply unacceptable as modern homes.

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"These developments are about profit maximisation and the financialisation of housing. There is no requirement to provide part V social housing with these developments so developers are using them to side step the law. Hotel style accommodation is not a solution."

He continued: "Fine Gael has torn up the rule book in favour of speculators and developers. The Minister for Housing was this morning defending his choices, but it is future generations who will pay the price.

"Across Dublin, Labour candidates are hearing about the impact these policies are having on local communities because developers are exploiting the housing crisis to build cheap and small bedsit type accommodation rather than sustainable housing and apartments."

(CM/MH)