Over the last number of weeks, newspapers have been filled with a series of reports highlighting our ever-deepening housing crisis. Housing prices are rising. Rents are rising. Homelessness is rising. Public housing targets are being missed. Private supply remains sluggish.
During the election, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael argued that their existing policies were working. If they continue to adopt this approach in the new administration, they are destined to repeat the mistakes of their recent past.
Last Thursday, the draft programme for government was published. It was warmly endorsed by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael members over the weekend. On Wednesday, Micheál Martin will be elected taoiseach and the new administration will set out about implementing its programme.
The housing section is just seven pages long. It is a restatement of existing policy with a small number of vague and at times completely unclear new commitments.
Whatever way you look at it, the housing section of the programme for government is deeply disappointing but not surprising
The new government has committed to ensuring the delivery of 300,000 public and private homes over six years, with an annual average of 50,000, reaching 60,000 new homes by 2030. These targets are not new. They were announced by Minister for Housing Darragh O’Brien last October.
[ Housing affordability crisis no longer confined to Dublin - SCSI reportOpens in new window ]
Unfortunately, they are significantly below the outgoing government’s own independent Housing Commission recommendations. The commission, made up of people involved in the delivery of housing on a daily basis, argued that at least 60,000 new homes would be needed annually.
It also stipulated that in order to tackle the housing deficit (people who urgently need homes now), supply would have to be front-loaded, delivering 60,000 new homes by 2027 and 70,000 in 2028 and 2029.
The commission also recommended that at least 20 per cent of the State’s total housing stock should be public housing. To achieve this, the new government would need to more than double social and affordable housing output to at least 25,000 homes a year. The programme for government falls far short of this, promising only a modest increase in social housing output and containing no targets for affordable housing delivery. There is also no detail on how the new government intends to fund or deliver increased public or private housing supply.
Neither the overall housing targets nor the public housing commitments come anywhere close to the scale of ambition set out by the Housing Commission. The new government has also ignored the commission’s detailed proposals on how to increase and accelerate supply. This has led prominent commission members including UCD’s Michelle Norris and Dermot O’Leary, chief economist with Goodbody Stockbrokers, to express their disappointment on X. Norris described the programme for government as “largely just a restatement of existing commitments” that are “not adequate to solve the housing crisis”. She also expressed concern that the programme included some “bad ideas, eg extending the First Home scheme to secondhand homes [that will] just further inflate house prices”.
Unfortunately it wasn’t just the members of the Housing Commission whose recommendations were ignored.
[ Housing crisis unlikely to improve in short term under ‘conservative’ targetsOpens in new window ]
In January, the country’s leading homeless service providers set out 10 key actions they wanted to see in the programme for government. These included at least 15,000 new social homes a year, a new strategy to end long-term homelessness by 2030, and a series of specific actions designed to meet that deadline. Like the Housing Commission, the Homeless Policy Group’s advice didn’t make to into the programme for government.
The conscious exclusion of this expert advice makes it is hard to disagree with Dr Lorcan Sirr, writing in this paper on January 12th, when he concluded that rising homelessness is “… not a question of money but of ideology, priorities and a tacit acceptance of the unacceptable”.
There are also a number of unimplemented commitments from the last programme for government that have been quietly dropped. These include the holding of a referendum on the right to housing, strengthening the regulation and enforcement of short-term letting rules, and a series of reforms of the social housing system. Whatever way you look at it, the housing section of the programme for government is deeply disappointing but not surprising.
At no stage during the negotiations were there any signs of possible changes in housing policy or differences of opinion between the parties. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael believe their housing policies are working. They are now supported in this illusion by Independents.
Unfortunately, the consequences will be felt across society. In the months to come, house prices and rents will keep rising. Public and private housing output will continue to fall short of need. Council waiting lists will grow longer. The number of adults and children in emergency accommodation will grow ever greater. More young people will be forced to emigrate, and too many people will continue to live in inadequate, insecure and expensive accommodation.
[ Next government urged to end long-term homelessness by 2030Opens in new window ]
But it doesn’t have to be this way. There are alternative policies. The Housing Commission report, the Homeless Policy Group’s recommendations and Sinn Féin’s alternative housing plan, a Home of Your Own, have all set out, in great detail, how to fix our dysfunctional housing system. Four things need to happen: delivering 60,000 new homes a year, 25,000 of which must be social and affordable; transforming the way in which the State delivers public housing and activates the SME private development sector; agreeing an ending homelessness action plan with the sector to meet the 2030 target; and enshrining the right to secure, adequate and affordable housing in the Constitution.
Yes, the election is over, but the housing crisis remains. Those of us who refuse to repeat the mistakes of the recent past have a responsibility to keep making the case for a radical reset of housing policy. And that is precisely what Sinn Féin intends to do.
Eoin Ó Broin TD is Sinn Féin spokesperson on housing
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