O’Brien failures have massive human costs
MINISTER for Housing Darragh O’Brien launched his latest quarterly progress report on Tuesday.
Journalists were treated to a slick promotional video celebrating the Coalition’s successes in housing, since coming to office three-and-a-half years ago.
Then, flanked by Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and Green Party leader Eamon Ryan, the Minister for Housing told his invited guests that his plan was working, and that progress was being made.
Journalists received a 31-page report filled with numbers and graphs and tables which, according to the Minister, confirmed that he and his colleagues were delivering on housing.
But when the press asked for more detail, the well-choreographed performance started to fall apart.
The problem was, the glossy report didn’t include any updates on the housing schemes that the Government is directly responsible for.
Their housing plan promises 9,100 new-build social homes this year.
At the end of June, just 1,400 had been delivered. The report had no update on progress since then.
When journalists asked the very reasonable question of how many newbuild social homes had been delivered by the end of the third quarter this year, the Minister refused to answer.
And so it was with affordable housing delivery. The Government’s plan promises 3,500 affordable homes to be delivered by councils, Approved Housing Bodies and the Land Development Agency (LDA) in 2023.
At the end of quarter two, just 123 were delivered. No update was provided for quarter three on Tuesday.
The Government’s controversial shared-equity loan scheme was supposed to deliver 2,000 home purchases this year. No update was provided at the press conference on how many homes have been bought this year.
It was the same story with the vacant property refurbishment grant. No data on the number of loans drawn down to date this year.
The Minister was quick to point out that this year, the Government had allocated €4bn for public housing delivery, through exchequer capital, Approved Housing Body borrowing and Strategic Investment Fund cash to the LDA.
But again, there was no update on how much of this money had been spent by the end of the third quarter.
You might ask why the Government launched a quarter-three progress report with nothing about their performance to the end of quarter three?
The answer is buried in the Department of Housing website’s quarter three update on the refurbishment grant. It shows that despite the scheme being open for 18 months just 21 grants have been drawn down.
On the First Home Scheme website, shared-equity loan figures show that by the end of quarter three, just 562 homes were bought with this high-risk product.
On the Oireachtas website, you can find the Minister for Housing’s response to my Parliamentary Question on how much of the €4bn had been spent by the end of October. The answer is just €1.9bn. Unfortunately, the latest data on the delivery of new-build social homes or affordable purchase and cost rental homes has not been published anywhere. However local authorities would have submitted the information to the Department of Housing in October.
On Tuesday afternoon the Minister for Housing Darragh O’Brien was on RTÉ Radio 1’s Drive Time.
He was specifically asked by Cormac Ó hEadhra for all of this information; the number of new build social homes delivered; the number of affordable homes delivered; the number of shared-equity loan drawdowns and the number of refurbishment grant drawdowns.
On each occasion, Minister O’Brien wouldn’t give an answer, even though the information had been published elsewhere or was available to his officials. So, the only conclusion to be drawn as to why none of this information was in the Minister’s quarterly progress report is that he didn’t want people to have the information.
Hardly surprising, given that since taking office in 2020, Darragh O’Brien has missed his social and affordable housing targets every year.
To make matters worse the new schemes he has introduced, such as the shared equity loan and the refurbishment grant, have been greatly delayed, beset by administrative problems and have chronically under performed.
Strikingly, since becoming Housing Minister, Darragh O’Brien has allowed hundreds of millions of euros of capital funding for social and affordable housing to go unspent.
To the end of last year, €1bn in exchequer funding for public housing was unspent. Targets for LDA spending have also been badly missed.
As a result, thousands of social and affordable homes that should have been built, were not.
The consequence of Minister O’Brien’s missed targets and unspent millions are everywhere to be seen.
Rising rents and house-prices. Young people with qualifications and jobs being forced to emigrate. Older people in the private rental sector fearful of their future, come pension age.
The most extreme consequence, of the Minister’s failure to meet targets, is record levels of homelessness, among single people, families, children and pensioners.
There are currently 7,714 households in Department of Housing funded emergency accommodation.
To the end of 2022, Darragh O’Brien has missed his new-build social housing targets by 8,537 homes.
You don’t need to be a mathematician to understand the human cost of Minister O’Brien’s housing failure. The evidence is to be seen in every hostel, hotel, B&B and family hubs where adults and children are forced to live, because of the Government’s failure to provide enough housing.
The reason why this Tuesday’s quarter three housing progress report didn’t include updates on the Government’s housing schemes is because the Government isn’t making any progress on these.
As a result, they are making the housing crisis worse not better.
The sooner we get them out of office the better.