BIO-NEIGHBOUR report

The Irish Green Building Council (IGBC), in partnership with Trinity College Dublin and supported by The Housing Agency, has published the BIO-NEIGHBOUR report.

The report sets out recommendations to enhance biodiversity in new residential developments across Ireland. The report comes at a critical time, as Ireland seeks to deliver 300,000 new homes by 2030 while also meeting increasingly ambitious biodiversity and nature restoration obligations under national and EU policy.

The report strongly promotes the integration of biodiversity and green-blue infrastructure into housing developments from the earliest planning stages. Central to the recommendations is the “mitigation hierarchy” approach (avoid, minimise, restore and offset) which aims to ensure that nature is considered as a key stakeholder throughout the development process. The report highlights that nature-led development can support not only biodiversity protection, but also improved health and wellbeing, climate resilience, cleaner air, streamlined planning approvals and higher-quality neighbourhoods.

Key recommendations include the development of a National Planning Statement on Nature, Biodiversity and Development; adoption of a nationally agreed biodiversity measurement approach; greater use of evidence-based ecological mapping; enhanced biodiversity requirements for publicly funded developments; and increased resourcing of local authorities, including planning ecologists and GIS specialists.

The report also places significant emphasis on skills and capacity building across the built environment sector, including biodiversity training for construction professionals, apprenticeships and third-level education programmes.

While CIF supports the report’s broad objectives around protecting and restoring biodiversity, creating high-quality neighbourhoods and improving coordination in planning and nature policy, it remains important that biodiversity measures are proportionate, practical and aligned with the realities of housing delivery. CIF continues to advocate for a strategic, plan-led approach to biodiversity at zoning and local authority level, rather than rigid or overly prescriptive site-level requirements which could introduce additional complexity, cost and planning uncertainty for housing projects.

The BIO-NEIGHBOUR report reflects the growing policy focus on biodiversity within the planning and development system and is likely to inform future national guidance, planning standards and implementation of the EU Nature Restoration Regulation in Ireland.