Minister defends pace of social housing builds

EOGHAN Murphy says the Government can afford to build 50,000 homes in the next two years – but won’t do it because they would be the wrong homes in the wrong places.

Rebuilding Ireland has set a target of delivering that amount of social houses by 2021, through a variety of measures, including new builds, and aims for an average of 25,000 new homes each year from then on. This year, 4,969 new social homes will be built, with a total 5,869 homes added to the supply.

But even with more than 85,000 on social housing waiting lists and 10,000 in emergency accommodation, the Housing Minister said he will not seek more money. ‘If we wanted to go out and build 50,000 houses tomorrow, or over the course of let’s say two years, potentially we could... but we would be building them in the wrong places,’ he said.

Speaking at the launch of a new homeless service from the Peter McVerry Trust, he said: ‘We would be building them in large greenfield sites, we would be building large threebedroom homes which is not the kind of stock we need.

‘When we look at the housing formation in this country what we need to do is build thousands of... apartments, we have to build in the right places and we have to build communities. That means social, affordable and private homes... together. Money isn’t the problem... it’s about directing resources in the most efficient way.’

Fianna Fáil housing spokesman Darragh O’Brien said he could not understand the Minister’s claim that new builds would end up in the wrong greenfield sites if construction was accelerated.

‘We’ve got the O’Devaney Gardens... we’ve got the Glass Bottle site... all brownfield sites that still haven’t broken ground,’ he said.