Having worked at the National Asset Management Agency (Nama) just after the banking crash, it is clear that Martin Whelan hasn’t shied away from challenging briefs during his time in public service.
So when the role of chief executive of the Housing Agency opened up, he threw his name into the hat. “I knew coming into this role that housing is high profile, that housing is challenging, but in order to make an impact, I think you have to put yourself out there,” he tells The Irish Times from his office on Mount Street Upper in Dublin, with the sounds of the bustling city he now calls home drifting in through the open window.
“The decisions we make now will determine where we are in five years, in 10 years, in 15 years.”
Whelan grew up in Abbeyleix, Co Laois, before moving to the capital for university and has “never looked back”. During his student days, he got his first taste of an industry that has remained a theme throughout his career: housing.
RM Block
“I did all the things a young student in Dublin does – lived in bedsits, house shares and above Chinese restaurants,” he says.
He ventured into lecturing after graduating.
Through his time lecturing, Whelan developed a “real interest in policy, policy execution and public affairs”.
But it was a directorship with the Construction Industry Federation (CIF) in the early 2000s – during a time when “the housing bubble began to get more intense” – that really set the tone for his career.
“That was a key milestone for me. After the crash, I took up a job with Nama and was really highly motivated as the country was in a very challenging space.
“Nama was, from my perspective, a key part of the resolution of Ireland’s difficulties,” he adds, reflecting on a “really intense” portion of his career. The role gave him the opportunity to play a formative part in the start-up phase of the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund (ISIF) before moving across to the National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA).
He jokes that his career has involved a lot of acronyms: “In short, I went from CIF to Nama to ISIF to the NTMA and had a role with the NDFA.”
Behind the abbreviations is a career that approached the issue of housing as a multifaceted equation “I’d come at housing from different angles; from the investment side and the delivery side, as well as the policy side, but also [with a focus on] the national interest.”
Now he is trying to bring all of those sectors together in a new role, as chief executive of the Housing Agency.
Formed more than a decade ago, the State agency’s primary function is to provide the services for, and on behalf of, the Minister for Housing – currently Fianna Fáil TD James Browne.
“Housing is the single biggest shared challenge facing Ireland right now,” he says. “The chance to work on that, to make a contribution, highly motivated me.”
He says his colleagues at the Housing Agency “work under significant pressure, significant scrutiny” and “amid the maelstrom of commentary for good and for bad”. Despite the watchful eyes, Whelan says they are having a positive impact on the sector.
At its core, he says the housing crisis stemmed from the global financial crash in 2008 and the property and banking crisis that followed in Ireland. However, he believes it has been exacerbated by recent international developments.
The “fundamental impact” the crisis had, he says, has led to many parts of the development sector in Ireland being undercapitalised since the downturn, which has damaged its ability to deliver at scale.
While Ireland has two big publicly listed home builders that have the ability to develop housing at the scale required, the Housing Agency chief argues that the sector more broadly does not. This, he says, is due to private funding shortages and constraints in the servicing of zoned land.
“I worked for Nama, I worked for the NTMA following the crisis, and I saw the challenges that the State had to fund itself. Invariably – in that context – funding for key enabling infrastructure was impacted and we are still dealing with the fallout from that.”
Whelan says the biggest challenge for the market, in terms of delivering homes at the scale needed, is costs. He points to the finances required, from an industry perspective, of developing an apartment; it has “increased by nearly €200,000 over the last three or four years”.
The cost of buying an apartment has risen significantly in comparison to average incomes. This has worsened the affordability gap in the housing market.
“As institutional investment in the Irish private rental sector was building up, we had global conflicts, we had a significant ramping up in terms of interest rates, and inflation,” he says.
Whelan argues that the solution to the housing crisis lies in increased Government involvement, with half of all housing delivered last year receiving State support of one sort or another.
“We have had a collapse in private sector capital investment, particularly in the private rental sector, so the State has stepped in.”
He says much of the Government’s focus in recent times has been on addressing the cost of delivery. Whelan notes changes to the VAT on apartments and in design standards in recent months, which he anticipates will unlock a backlog of 30,000 apartments that have received planning consent but haven’t yet been built.
Running through the full list of public agencies involved in the housing space, Whelan rejects the notion that there are too many cooks in the kitchen.
“From the outside, that may look to be the case,” he says, adding that since he has taken the role in the Housing Agency, the various housing bodies have “very defined, very discreet roles” and that the proof of the efficiency of those bodies “is in the pudding”.
“Over 17,000 homes last year were delivered by those entities. That is a very significant delivery by the State and I am convinced that a large proportion of the homes outside of that 17,000 would not have been delivered were it not for the State’s intervention.
“Housing is often reduced to a numbers game and don’t get me wrong, those numbers are hugely important. Success is usually determined by where you fall on either side of those targets,” Whelan says, within the context of “creating sustainable and inclusive communities”.
“But for me, that number is a hugely important enabler, rather than an end in itself. “It is an enabler of a more inclusive, more sustainable housing system, and we’re seeing real signs of that now in terms of the type of mixed-tenure communities that are being delivered.”
However, the Government’s housing targets will likely not be met this year or next, the Economic Social and Research Institute (ESRI) warned in September, projecting delivery to rise to 35,000 this year.
The Report of the Housing Commission says a minimum of 300,000 homes are needed by 2030. Asked if this is achievable, Whelan says there has been a “recognition from Government” that it will be “very difficult to achieve”. However, he says Government is “right to be ambitious”.
“We delivered over 33,000 homes last year, from virtually standing still five or six years earlier. So that is a significant output figure,” he says.
Even so, annual delivery trails the average figure of 50,500 homes needed each year to reach the target.
“I do think that’s achievable, and I think the measures that we’ve seen will feed into supply over the coming period,” Whelan says.
This positive outlook is based on the elimination of the traditional “tension” between the State and industry players, which was previously “adversarial” in nature. Instead, he sees a more collaborative approach with home builders on delivering affordable housing.
While the State involvement is crucial, he says, it alone is not sufficient to reach the volume of home delivery needed. “To get to the output figures that our economy requires, we need to see a reactivation of private sector investment.”
Another issue, according to Whelan, is the number of big-home construction companies, with the State having just two publicly listed home builders in Ireland, in the form of Glenveagh Homes and Cairn Homes.
“We probably need six. We probably need eight. That’s the reality of it. We need institutionally-backed entities that can ride out the normal cycles in funding and in investment,” he says, noting their ability to “take a degree of risk and go in advance of the market” makes them core to the solution to the housing crisis.
It is a view shared by the home builders themselves. Glenveagh Homes chief executive Stephen Garvey told the Business Post in May of his belief that as many as eight more big developers are needed to scale up housing delivery.
Between 2019 and 2023, Cairn Homes and Glenveagh Homes were the two biggest home builders in Ireland, accounting for 15 per cent of all housing delivery, research by Goodbody suggests, but their commencements were largely concentrated in Dublin.
Housing delivery from the 10 largest home builders in Ireland pales against the same values in the UK. Further, number 10 in that list commenced just 250 units in the year, suggesting that home building is spread across smaller construction companies in Ireland.
“We have to support the sector to increase its capacity. I think the existing PLCs are doing a really important job. But can any one individual entity deliver the scale of housing required? I would say ‘no’.”
It doesn’t sound like he’s a supporter of a State competing with private developers, suggesting the State and private sectors should “stick to what they do well”.
“I definitely don’t see the State competing with the private sector, nor do I believe it should,” noting there are efficiencies the private sector can provide which the State should support.
Whelan says there is a “determined focus” on setting up a housing market in Ireland, which will be more resilient to international developments, but that there is significant uncertainty in the Irish housing market that is deterring investment. Despite this, he is optimistic.
While he views cost as a “big issue” in home building and as a threat to a “sustainable investment model” for external funding sources, he also believes recent Government actions (including the VAT cut on apartment construction in October’s budget) have had an impact on these concerns. He points to two big home builders that have acknowledged the measures addressed the issue of viability in home building.
He hails the State’s use of approved housing bodies (AHBs) as “one of the success stories” of the recent policy responses to the crisis, having delivered more than 40 per cent of social housing last year.
The sector has suffered a blow from the controversy around the Peter McVerry Trust that left the organisation in need of a Government bailout. But even as the Housing Agency chief accepts that the controversy has damaged confidence in AHBs, he stressed his own confidence in the sector.
“I actually don’t think it should be a perception driver for the sector, because what I’ve seen is very impressive,” he said, noting his belief that AHBs “do their business very, very well”.
Another source of optimism is the planned reforms for judicial reviews of planning decisions, which he says are a “significant issue”.
“I know from my investment background that time and uncertainty are big barriers. They’re a big reason why developments that could be viable are not viable.”
Whelan says the legal mechanism was meant to ensure that arms of the State operated “appropriately” and were not envisaged to be used to stall and frustrate key housing and infrastructure projects.
“We know we need to achieve more going forward, but we’re not going to achieve more unless we address those structural barriers.”
CV
Name: Martin Whelan
Job: Housing Agency chief executive
Age: 49
Lives: Portmarnock, Co Dublin
Hobbies: A hurling coach for Naomh Mearnóg and a passionate fan of the national soccer team
Something we might expect: Believes young people should be optimistic about the future of housing in the country
Something that might surprise: A big fan of five-at-the-back formations in soccer and sets up his Naomh Mearnóg team “to frustrate”
