Parties that created our devastating housing crisis cannot be relied on to sort it out
State repeatedly missing social housing targets led to this disaster
AS 2023 comes to a close there are competing versions of how the Government fared on the housing front this year. In December, Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien pointed to the number of new homes that would be built by the year’s end. He confidently predicted that overall supply would exceed the Governments target, in its housing plan, of 29,000.
The most recent figures available from the Department of Housing website show that the rolling annual completion figure at the end of Quarter 2 was slightly more than 30,000.
But when your targets are too low in the first place, does meeting them really signify progress?
In contrast to the Government’s message of ‘our plan is working’, the opposition, this TD included, argues that their plan is in fact making things worse.
Both the Housing Commission and the Economic and Social Research Institute are due to report in the new year on what the actual level of need is for housing in the State is. Both organisations are expected to say we need at least 50,000 new homes a year to tackle the housing crisis.
If the Government meet all their housing plan targets, they will only reach 40,000 new homes by 2030.
And with each year of chronic under supply, the level of pent-up demand grows, pushing up real housing need even further.
To make matters worse, the Government continues to miss its own social and affordable delivery targets.
More than four in 10 of the new homes to be delivered this year should be Government-funded, social, cost rental and affordable purchase homes.
Their housing plan commits to 9,100 new build social and 3,500 affordable homes delivered by councils, Approved Housing Bodies and the Land Development Agency.
At the end of September just 2,642, or 29% of the social target and only 262, or 7% of the affordable target had been delivered.
While completions accelerate in the final quarter of the year it is hard to see the overall public housing target of 12,600 social and affordable homes being met.
Every single year since Darragh O’Brien has been Minister he has missed the only housing targets that he is directly responsible for, the public housing targets.
The consequence of this failure is rising rents, rising house prices, increased emigration and record levels of homelessness.
In 2023, new-build house prices and private sector rents hit the highest levels since records began.
Thousands of young people with good qualifications and employment prospects are emigrating because they cannot put an affordable roof over their heads.
Thousands more, nearing the end of their working life, are trapped in an expensive and insecure rental market, fearful of how they will pay the rent after retirement.
These are the people who should be living in publicly delivered affordable rental and purchase homes. But the Government’s affordable housing targets are too low and, year after year, they are missing them.
Meanwhile, more than 4,000 children woke up on Christmas morning in a hostel, hotel or family HUB. They are homeless because the Government’s social housing targets are too low and not being met.
This past year saw the largest number of adults and children made homeless in modern times.
More than 13,000 people were in Department of Housing-funded emergency accommodation.
When all those living in emergency accommodation – funded by other Government departments or not – or in receipt of any State funding are counted, the real level of homelessness is 18,000 and rising.
So, Darragh O’Brien and his cabinet colleagues may have spent Christmas convincing themselves that their plan is working.
But all around them is clear evidence that the plan is not only failing but actually making things worse.
So, if 2023 was a year of housing failure, 2024 must be the year of change in housing.
Next year must be when we say it’s time to bring house prices and rents down, to dramatically increase and accelerate the delivery of social and affordable homes, and to see month on month reductions in homelessness.
These things are all possible, but only with a change of Government and a change of housing policy.
A Sinn Féin-led Government would deliver the largest social and affordable housing programme in the history of the State.
We would more than double the current Government’s output.
We would deliver genuinely affordable homes for working people, at and below €300,000 in Dublin, and in many places at and below €250,000.
We would tackle vacancy and dereliction with an ambitious target of at least 4,000 homes brought back into use each year.
We would replace house prices inflating demand-side subsidies, with sensible activation measures to ensure that private builders deliver good quality private homes at lower prices.
We would stand up for private renters, banning rent increases for three years and putting a full month’s rent back into every
It is hard to see the public housing target of 12,600 being met this year
Owners and renters in defective homes would get 100% redress
private renter’s pocket.
We would resource and reform our planning system ensuring that it makes good quality decisions, following meaningful public participation, meeting the social, economic and environmental needs of the country.
And we would ensure that all those owners and renters living in defective homes would get 100% redress.
Next year will bring elections, including hopefully a general election. That will provide all of us with the opportunity to set out our stall.
At most pressing question at the centre of the election debate will be who is best placed to end the housing crisis.
Fine Gael have been in Government for 12 years. Fianna Fáil have been propping them up for 7. The parties that created the housing crisis cannot be expected to fix it. That is why we need change.
In the coming weeks and months Sinn Féin will set out in great detail our alternative housing plan.
We will show what ambition in housing looks like, and more importantly, how it can be delivered.
The past 12 months was another bad year on the housing front, especially for all those without a home, in an inadequate home or an expensive one. Let’s make 2024 a better year for all those in housing need.