The State is currently delivering 50 per cent of all new homes, Minister for Housing James Browne has revealed.
He indicated that approximately 15,000 of the 30,000 new homes delivered last year came either directly via local councils or indirectly through Government-funded Approved Housing Bodies (AHBs), the Land Development Agency (LDA) or other state supports and grant schemes.
“In terms of actual numbers that’s correct, we need to deliver 15,000 homes ... but the State doesn’t have the capacity to deliver 30,000 homes, we need the private sector doing that,” Minister Browne told the Dublin Economic Workshop’s annual conference in Wexford.
He said there needed to be a “step change” in housing delivery to lift the supply of new builds from 30,000 to 55,000, the Government’s target rate.
RM Block
The Government’s Housing for All plan targets the provision of an additional 300,000 units by 2030, starting with 41,000 units this year.
But a slowdown in construction, particularly apartment construction, means this year’s target is unlikely to be met.
Nonetheless Mr Browne insisted that there was a “transformation happening in Ireland’s housing system”. He noted that approximately €40.5 billion of the €102 billion earmarked for projects under the State’s updated National Development Plan (NDP).
“That fundamentally means that one in every three euro that this State is spending (under the NDP) is on housing, including Uisce Éireann (formerly Irish Water),” he said.
Minister Browne said updated guidelines for local authorities now require them to zone enough land to deliver 55,000 new homes a year.
However, he admitted there has been a “big disconnect” between local authorities and Government around policy.
The Government has been at loggerheads with local authorities over the delivery of housing with Taoiseach Micheál Martin threatening to use legislation to rezone land for housing if local authorities did not zone enough land.
In July, Mr Browne instructed local authorities to reopen their development plans and increase the amount of land zoned for housing.
Dublin City Council’s assistant chief executive Tony Flynn said recently, however, that the council would not be changing its housing targets despite new Government directions and that there was sufficient capacity in the current development plan to meet the local area’s housing needs.
Minister Browne said he had powers under the new Planning and Development Act to compel local authorities to comply.
“I don’t want to have to do that ...(but) I’ll do it very soon if I get a sense that a local authority is not going to deliver on its own,” he said.
In a separate address to the conference, the Central Bank’s deputy governor Vasileios Madouros said the regulator’s mortgage lending rules had constrained the build-up of household debt that had accompanied rising house prices during the Celtic Tiger period.
“Mortgage credit has been flowing to the economy in aggregate, but the measures have constrained the emergence of a tail of highly-indebted household,” he said.
“In turn, these more sustainable lending standards have contributed to lower levels of financial distress amongst mortgagors,” he said.
