BAD housing can wreck people's lives and that doesn't only apply to social and affordable housing and the fact we aren't building enough for the less well off in society. It also applies to not providing enough family-oriented developments. You could argue that the houses we're building are too big and the apartments too small.

Current regulations are not good enough, most of the new apartments and housing developments aren't suitable for families.

We're going to have to start building much bigger apartments to accommodate for the fact that more people are going to be living in them long-term rather than as a temporary measure. And most of the new developments, whether they're housing schemes or apartment schemes, don't have adequate play areas or pitches for children.

In order to do this though, we have to start changing the regulations. Although the current minimum apartment sizes have been increased, for example to 65sq m for a two-bed in Dublin, it's still not large enough for families. And there are certainly not enough three-bed units being built. The problem with giving builders minimum limits is that they're going to stick to them and do their best to try and make a pro"t. You can't blame builders for wanting to do that. But you can blame the government for not insisting on more family-friendly developments.

The government are great at talking about things, they'll mention increasing balcony sizes, minimum bedroom sizes, increasing storage space and so on. But they're a bit on the slow side when it comes to insisting that builders make these changes.

Some builders are building bigger apartment sizes and we're seeing more apartments with higher ceilings, but we're not building enough three-bed apartments. Family-oriented living, whether in apartments or housing estates, requires play areas for children, but these aren't included as provision for planning and they should be. If the government was serious about all of its talk, then these things would be included as conditions and the planners would be given the proper back-up to insist the regulations be met.

People talk about market forces and the fact that the market isn't looking for three-bed apartments. If people could get three-beds for the price that they're getting a two-bed, I'd bet they buy them. Of course people want extra room, they just can't afford it. But threebeds just aren't as pro"table for developers and the market is all about pro"tability.

As a builder I pride myself on building the best and we're starting to build bigger apartments. Our latest development on Russell Street has higher ceilings, but it doesn't have any three beds. That's something we're going to introduce in the next scheme we do.

The dif"culty is that, in order to build family-oriented buildings for long-term living, we're going to have to go up, otherwise it isn't pro"table. So regulations are going to have to facilitate higher buildings.

People can't keep moving out of apartments in the city centre and going to the outskirts if they want housing. Most young families can't afford to buy in the city. If a couple moves into an apartment in the city centre now, they know they're going to have to move out if they want a family. So we have to build apartments that are suitable for long-term living, which means more family-oriented schemes.

With better legislation and proper back-up, planners would be able to force builders to produce better developments. But all of this needs to start with government legislation.