The coalition housing plan has been overtaken by events and needs to be adjusted

With just 20,000 completions last year, the plan is to reach 33,000 by 2024. Sinn Fein
argued the plan underestimated the need for social and truly affordable housing.

The government hoped to reach 10,000 social and 4,000 affordable housing by 2025. We said that by 2022 the number had to be 12,000 social and 8,000 affordable housing. Academics, including Trinity College Dublin’s Ronan Lyons and Dublin Technical University’s Lorcan Sirr, also criticized the targets.

While construction site closures related to Covid-19 disrupted supply, private sector production has returned to pre-pandemic levels. Public sector provision recovered more slowly, hampered by excessive central government bureaucracy. Brexit and Covid-19 have led to a significant increase in construction costs. The energy crisis and the war in Ukraine have prolonged this trend. The feasibility of many construction projects is now in question and endangers future supplies.

Separately, the ongoing crisis in the private rental sector, coupled with the low provision of social housing, has fueled another homeless crisis.

Before the war in Ukraine, our housing system was in deep crisis. Now we have crisis after crisis.

Although we do not know the number of refugees who will eventually arrive in Ireland, it is already clear that it will be significant.

Last week Darragh O’Brien was forced into an embarrassing relegation. For weeks, his office reported that fair-deal homes, local government purchases and vacant public housing were being used to house Ukrainian refugees. On Tuesday, Housing Department officials told the Oireachtas Housing Committee that this was not the case.

Their role was limited to assisting the Department of Children in securing and refurbishing large derelict buildings and possibly providing some modular shelters in the future. Roderic O’Gorman and his department are doing the heavy lifting of the Ukrainian refugee crisis, not Darragh O’Brien and the housing construction.

In fact, officials told the Oireachtas Housing Committee that they would not be revising their housing targets despite the deepening housing crisis. This is a mistake that will haunt the minister.

We must do our part to offer sanctuary to those fleeing this brutal war. But we also have to make sure that we don’t leave other people in need of housing behind.

The government’s housing plan was not designed with all of these pressures in mind. It’s time for the housing minister to be honest with people and accept that the plan is no longer fit for purpose. We need a new plan with greater ambition and urgency to face the growing real estate crisis head-on. If this does not happen, the crisis and the acute need for housing will intensify. This, in turn, will fuel resentment towards Ukrainian refugees as competition for scarce resources intensifies. This must be avoided at all costs.

Last week I wrote to the Housing Secretary expressing my concerns about his approach so far and proposing a number of alternatives.

Darragh O’Brien needs to significantly increase its housing plan targets, specifically the number of social and affordable homes delivered each year.

He must also cut the bureaucracy of councils and licensed housing associations to provide more social housing at an accelerated pace. This requires additional capital investments from the treasury. The government must also look at all other funding options, including the Housing Finance Agency and the European Investment Bank.

In addition to accelerating the public housing projects already in the pipeline, the government must identify dormant private developments with planning permission and convert them to public housing, subject to strict financial controls. With at least 90,000 vacant homes statewide, the government needs to do more to put that inventory back into active use. It’s faster, cheaper and better for the environment. To stem the rapid rise in homelessness, the housing minister should allow local authorities to buy private rental housing if the sedentary HAP or RAS tenant has been evicted and is at risk of homelessness.

In the meantime, the government must use the 62,000 vacant holiday homes to ensure Ukrainian refugees have adequate emergency shelter upon arrival. The need for housing in our society is growing every day. The government’s housing plan cannot meet this need. Now is the time to be ambitious and make the necessary changes.

We need a housing plan that leaves no person or family behind. Such a plan is possible. What is missing is the political will.

Eoin Ó Broin is TD for Dublin Mid-West and a spokesperson for Sinn Féin on housing