Housing completions in Dublin for 2000 were less than they were in 1999, while housing completions in the surrounding travel-to-work area have stabilised or fallen slightly, a seminar on urban congestion was told last week.

The bad news for home-hunters was made even worse with the revelation by Mr Brendan Williams of the Faculty of the Built Environment at Dublin Institute of Technology, that house completions are rising in the outer Leinster area - the very area where planners do not want new settlements based on car-commuting to Dublin.

Mr Williams, addressing the Foundation for Fiscal Studies annual conference in Dublin's Hilton Hotel, said the aspiration of planners was for a compact city - a place where good facilties, clean air and good public transport combined to create a good living space.

However, the experience of our efforts was the opposite - a situation where planners have created an "edge city" based around the M50.

Mr Williams said it was particularly disappointing that the stakeholders in the Strategic Planning Guidelines, the seven major local authorities in the Greater Dublin Area, had, through rezoning plans, already rejected their own guidelines.