Rezone more and more land for housing, they all say, and desperate first-time buyers will miraculously be able to afford a home of their own. Or build skyscrapers in the docklands area and this, too, will help to dampen down the alarmingly upward curve in the price of housing in the Dublin area.

It just couldn't be as simple as that, yet the pressure is on to implement such simplistic solutions. In large measure, it is being applied by the development lobby which has the most to gain if the relevant authorities were to respond positively to the shrill cries emanating from builders, estate agents and even some economists.

County councillors will now be able to cite the "national interest" in tabling their rezoning motions. As one of my colleagues put it: "All rezoning will henceforth be for the glory of God and the honour of Ireland, not to mention, musha, the poor unfortunate first-time buyers, and sure they're only trying to start off in life."

There is now a widespread perception that we're running out of zoned land in the greater Dublin area. According to the development lobby, there is an urgent need to rezone more land for housing on the suburban periphery to build most of the 100,000 new homes which the ESRI estimates will be needed within the next decade.

A recent survey by Kildare County Council, however, showed 2,694 acres of zoned residential land available for development throughout the county. If all of this land was to be developed at the standard suburban density of 10 units per acre, it would accommodate nearly 27,000 new houses.

Some councillors resent such statistics being trotted out. They would much prefer to get on with the business of rezoning more and more land, particularly in the dormitory belt of north Kildare, where developers are only too anxious to build increasingly expensive "starter homes" to cater for the overflow from Dublin.

However, they never seem to ask themselves whether we should be building more and more sprawling low-density housing estates, which consume good agricultural land and condemn their residents to a lifetime dependence on cars to gain access to work, shops and schools. What has this got to do with "sustainable development"?

Left-wing councillors, oddly enough, tend to adopt the most reactionary stance on the issue of raising densities to more realistic levels. They were among the first to denounce a proposal to dispense with density limits in the former Dun Laoghaire borough, which is particularly well-served by public transport, including DART.

Since then, the old density ceilings have been reinstated - much to the dismay of Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown's planners. At the same time, councillors have voted to rezone hundreds of acres of land in the Rathdown area of the county for low-density suburban housing, which is nearly impossible to service with good public transport.

In Castletymon, a local authority estate in Tallaght, it was the Socialist Party which led a campaign against plans to build an extra five senior citizens' dwellings on a piece of useless open space. Tony Gregory TD, who would see himself as a radical, still favours two-storey houses with gardens front and back as the norm for the inner city.

Recently, city councillors recommended that a revised scheme of apartments and town houses at Mount St Anne's in Milltown should be refused - despite the fact that it is located right alongside the proposed Luas light rail line.

They also rejected an earlier scheme for the site, as did An Bord Pleanala, because the density was "too high."

Surely we should be able to build housing at higher densities to capitalise on the availability of a highgrade public transport system? In Barrow Street, where there are plans for a new DART station, local residents are up in arms over Zoe Developments' plans to build to nine or 10 storeys. Do they want the site covered in cottages?

We are still living with a folk memory of the slums, stoked every so often by regular revivals of Sean O'Casey's plays. People in Dublin and elsewhere equate higher housing densities with the tenements of old or with the acknowledged failure of Ballymun, soon to be demolished. Yet Ballymun, though high-rise, is actually a low-density scheme.

Kneejerk reactions against higher housing densities - and even high-rise housing - are as unjustified as they are irrational. Certainly, many people believe that builders would exploit a loosening of the current regulations to pack in as many units as possible on any given site, but there is no valid reason why we cannot have design quality.

As it is, most housing is designed with no architectural involvement. Building more densely in the suburbs and going higher in the docklands can only be done with a degree of expertise and sensitivity and, though architects have led us down many blind alleys in the past, it would be fair to say that most of them have learned their lessons, too.

We certainly cannot allow Dublin to spread out all over its hinterland until it reaches Kinnegad, in blind fulfilment of the Anglo-American "dispersed city" model. The capital already occupies a land area which is roughly twice the size of European cities with comparable populations; they are more compact because of higher densities.

Other issues also enter the equation, notably the State's continued discrimination against the existing housing stock. Why shouldn't firsttime house-purchasers be given a real choice between, say, buying a new house on a half-finished estate in Kilcock or a second-hand house in Stoneybatter, within walking distance of the city centre?

That choice is effectively denied to them because, in opting for the latter, they would not only lose the £3,000 first-time buyers' grant but they would also have to pay a quite extortionate rate of stamp duty.

This twin penalty amounts to a shameless subsidy to the construction industry which can no longer be justified on rational grounds.

The building industry is on the pig's back. Many people who sign contracts to buy a new house for, say, £90,000, find that the price has suddenly jumped by £8,000 as the builder cashes in on a rapidly rising market. In some cases, identical houses in the third phase of an estate cost £20,000 more than those in the first phase.

As for the notion that building high-rise apartment blocks in the docklands will make housing more affordable, it is surely self-evident that these are likely to be marketed as penthouses with spectacular views, with prices to match their height. Even so, it makes planning sense to build 10,000 flats in this area if it helps to alleviate suburban sprawl.

The "empty-nest" syndrome also needs to be tackled. Many middle-aged couples, with their children raised and gone, are living in larger houses with four or five bedrooms. Might it not be useful if they were encouraged to move to smaller houses or apartments, thereby helping to recycle and rejuvenate our current housing stock?

We should also remember that a high rate of home ownership is not in itself a measure of prosperity. As Prof Duncan McLennan, of Glasgow University, noted in 1988, the home ownership rate in Switzerland - one of the richest countries in the world - is less than 30 per cent, whereas in Bangladesh, one of the poorest, it's over 90 per cent.

Peter Bacon Associates, the consultants appointed by the Minister of State for the Environment, Bobby Molloy, to study the factors influencing house price inflation, are expected to report back at the end of March. It will be very interesting to see if they take the wider issues on board, including the role of housing associations and co-operatives.