The Bacon Report, published over 18 months ago, clearly demonstrated that the prime reason for the increase in the price of Dublin houses is that there are more people seeking to buy houses than there are houses available to buy - either old or new. When demand for any product - be it a car, a bag of potatoes or a house - is greater than supply, prices will rise. Irish - and Dublin house prices in particular - have been obeying with vengeance this fundamental law of economics for the past five years.

The Bacon Report proposed a range of Government initiatives to increase the supply of houses. These initiatives mainly focused on increasing the supply of land for the development of new houses. They included a 20 per cent rate of Capital Gains Tax for farmers and others releasing zoned land and various initiatives to persuade land owners and local authorities to make land available.

Over the last 18 months, the supply of land has increased but the supply of new houses has hardly changed - it has actually declined slightly over earlier years (see table).

In a recent Morning Ireland radio interview, Dr Peter Bacon complained that, despite Government initiatives, he believed "not one extra house" had been built over that which would have been provided had no changes been made by Government. The house completions table would appear to support Dr Bacon's view. He laid the blame for this situation at the feet of the Irish town planning system and I believe that Dr Bacon is right in his analysis. Most planners would agree with him.

However, the fundamental problem is that we have an understaffed and under-resourced planning system which is increasingly being given an additional workload by the Government without any significant increase in its fundamental resource - qualified town planners.

If we want a complex planning system to provide rigid land use and development controls, resources have to be made available to run the system.

There has been a 66 per cent increase in planning applications over the past five years but virtually no increase in the pool of town planners available to process them.

To overcome this bottleneck, we could have a "free for all" and let market forces determine the form of our cities and countryside as happens in parts of the US, but this would have serious, long-term consequences both on the environment and on urban form.

This under-resourcing of the planning system manifests itself through the time delay in processing planning applications, rezoning and installing infrastructure. Every housing developer has stories to tell of delays in receiving planning permissions - and most are true.

The development industry wants to increase the supply of new houses but the system cannot be made go faster than the number of man hours available to prepare and process each planning application, development plan and area action plan.

Why is this?

First, local authority planning offices are hugely understaffed and cannot cope with the increase in planning applications that has occurred over the last five years. Effectively, there has been no increase in the number of planning staff employed in the planning offices since before the days of the Celtic Tiger. A fixed number of planning officials are being asked to deal with a substantially increased number of applications.

Second, over the past number of years, planning applications have become far more complex due to the new environmental and construction legislation that has been imposed by Government on the planning system and on the development industry.

Third, because the planning process has become far more legalistic due to the large sums of money involved, all involved have to keep a weather eye out for possible potential litigation. This means each planning application has to be examined in far greater detail, both in its preparation and in its analysis.

Finally - and more significantly - there has been an exodus of experienced planners from the public sector to the private sector due to the higher salaries being offered by consultants and developers. The local authorities, as well as being understaffed, are also under-skilled and unable to cope with the complexity and increased number of applications.

For example, one planning authority with a permanent complement of 19 qualified planners at the present time has three positions vacant, six positions occupied by experienced staff and the balance of the qualified staff (10 planners) have under six months' experience. This situation is not unusual throughout the country.

It is to these inexperienced and overworked planners that huge pressure and responsibility is being applied. The planning system is being stretched to breaking point and many applications are being put on the long finger or being unnecessarily refused. This can be compared to having large numbers of jumbo jets flown by pilots with six months' experience when the country's survival depends on an operational air fleet.

Delays are occurring in the planning system and dedicated administrative and planning staff are struggling to cope.

However, let us all recognise the essence of the problem and try to address it rather than blaming the sophisticated and generally competent system which we have painfully developed over the past 40 years.

The situation is expected to worsen with the large increase in workload which will be imposed on the planning system upon the introduction of the new Planning Bill when it becomes law later this year. A case could well be made for the Government to postpone this legislation until the local authorities have the resources to actually operate the new and complex legislation.

The fundamental problem is that there are not enough trained town planners in Ireland. At present, the total number of qualified planners in Ireland is about 300. A recent study by the Irish Planning Institute (IPI) and the Town Planning Institute (TPI) submitted to the Minister for the Environment suggested that to adequately staff the planning system and to implement the existing and proposed legislation, it would require a complement of about 750 qualified planners.

This estimate may or may not be slightly too high. However, it is clear that the present output from the UCD Planning School (the only Planning School in the Republic) of 20 to 25 planners per annum is not even going to scratch the surface of the problem. We need to double the output of UCD immediately and probably introduce an undergraduate course there.

In summary, house prices are unlikely to stabilise or fall if we continue to rely on the present number of overworked planners in the Dublin area. The Government is the only body that can take the action necessary to increase the number of planners in the immediate future.

At the moment, it seems nothing is being done in this regard.

William K Nowlan is a practising planning and development consultant working with leading property developers. He is also Visiting Professor of Property at the University of Ulster.