The Government’s latest housing plan, unveiled last December, has set a six-year target of delivering just over 300,000 housing units by 2030, including 72,000 social homes. More than €9 billion in capital funding has been allocated for 2026, while the Land Development Agency received an additional €8.75 billion to lead large-scale developments. In a related initiative the Accelerating Infrastructure Taskforce report has outlined key objectives to unblock barriers to housing development along with other infrastructure projects.
The plan isn’t lacking in ambition but is it realistic?
It has met with widespread criticism from a range of Opposition parties and advocacy groups. Sinn Féin and the Social Democrats, for example, criticised the removal of annual targets as evidence of the Government’s lack of confidence in its own plans while the Irish Congress of Trade Unions criticised insufficient increases in social housing targets.
David Howard, of Property Industry Ireland (PII), Ibec’s trade association for the property sector, acknowledges that the plan is ambitious but is “probably the right level of ambition”. He doesn’t see the lack of an annual target figure for completion as a major issue as many of the initiatives being put in place will have a cumulative and accelerating effect over the six-year time frame, he says.
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One of the biggest barriers to the plan is the lack of skilled workers, with a current labour shortfall of more than 100,000 workers estimated. Roughly 25,000 new workers a year are needed to deliver the pipeline of investment in construction and infrastructure projects, according to PII, and Howard says promoting apprenticeships is key to meeting this target.
“We’ve done it before and there’s plenty of evidence from Germany and other European countries about how apprenticeships can offer a very desirable career path with almost guaranteed job prospects and attractive salaries for those who undertaken them.”
One way in which the skills gaps could be addressed is if more women were involved in construction. Currently only 10 per cent of the industry’s workforce is female. The recent Construction Industry Federation (CIF) International Women’s Day Summit highlighted pathways to careers in construction for women including via Stem subjects and construction-related apprenticeships.
The CIF noted that the industry is rapidly digitalising and modernising, and on-site roles in trades and engineering are only part of the skills mix required. There are also many roles in digital construction, sustainability, off-site manufacturing, design, planning, finance, health and safety among others.
Lorcan Sirr, senior lecturer in housing at the Technical University Dublin, notes that the ambitious targets will involve the construction industry delivering at a rate not seen previously. Productivity may be an issue, especially for SMEs, with a requirement to deliver significantly more units every year than they have done previously.
However, taking a holistic view, he says, the devil may be in the detail of what the 300,000 units spoken about consists of.
“I am more concerned about whether the units delivered will be the appropriate mix for what is needed. We need homes for families as well as single people that will serve people over the course of a lifetime. It doesn’t matter whether that’s apartments or houses, but tenure is extremely important. Home ownership is the backbone of our welfare system and people cannot afford to retire into a renting situation.”
Virtually all of the apartments developed in Dublin since 2022 have been built to rent, something that has forced young families who wish to buy homes out to the midlands commuter belt, causing massive congestion on the roads as they commute to Dublin for work, he points out.
Aside from skills, access to sufficient zoned serviced land, as well as finance and an investor-friendly environment are other key considerations.
“Local authorities need to look at where they can zone more land for housing but there’s no point in zoning land that doesn’t have the roads or water infrastructure in place or where those vital elements can’t be delivered in a relatively short space of time,” says Howard.
Clear gaps exist in housing funding, especially for apartments. This was among the key reasons for the high-profile Irish state presence at the MIPIM property investment conference in Cannes earlier this month, which featured a dedicated Irish pavilion for the first time. The large Irish delegation there sought to attract international capital such as pension funds and sovereign wealth funds by highlighting Ireland’s overhauled planning system and stable regulatory environment as key selling points for long-term capital investment.
