Calls in Cork for establishment of State construction company to increase building of affordable homes 

Cork opposition TDs have criticised the Government’s lack of progress on housing after a damning report by The Central Bank.

The bank’s September quarterly report forecasts that fewer houses will be completed in the State this year than last, and that the Taoiseach’s target of 40,000 will not be close to being met.

In a special report accompanying their September quarterly bulletin, the bank has revised its projections for housing completions for 2024 down to 32,000. The number of completions for 2023 was 32,695.

State construction company 

People Before Profit-Solidarity TD Mick Barry described the report as “a serious failure on the part of Simon Harris, the Government, and their entire housing strategy”.

He has called for the establishment of a State construction company to increase the building of social and affordable housing.

“It is one thing for the Taoiseach to set a housing target that won’t be met,” Mr Barry said. “It’s another thing entirely to end up with less house completions than we had last year.”

“The market has failed to resolve the housing crisis.

“The country needs a different approach to for-profit housing development,” he added, suggesting it would be “a good way to put some of those Apple billions to work for ordinary people in this country”.

House prices up 

Fellow TD for Cork North Central, Sinn Fein’s Thomas Gould, said Fianna Fàil’s and Fine Gael’s promises to deliver housing “have been exposed as nothing more than rhetoric”.

He said Sinn Féin’s alternative housing plan, A Home of Your Own, “would bring the dream of home ownership back into the reach of working people in Cork”.

He continued: “Sinn Féin is committed to ending Ireland’s housing crisis. We will deliver the most ambitious public housing programme in the history of the State to ensure that everyone in Cork has a home of their own.”

Social Democrats leader Holly Cairns noted that, according to the latest figures from the CSO, house prices across Cork and Kerry have increased by 9.1% over the previous 12 months.

“Both the Taoiseach and the minister for housing insist they have a hold on this crisis, and that 40,000 new homes will be built this year,” Ms Cairns said. “But we can now clearly see this for what it is: Yet another empty promise from this government.

“The failure to come anywhere close to meeting the 40,000-new-homes target is even more concerning given that the Central Bank is now estimating that we actually need at least 52,000 homes a year until 2050,” she said.

An entire generation has been locked out of housing, “and they deserve better than empty promises and missed targets”, she said. “We need to urgently scale up housing delivery in order to bring this housing disaster to an end.”

The Social Democrats will be setting out a “comprehensive, affordable housing plan” in the coming weeks, central to which will be to subsidise the not-for-profit sector to build tens of thousands of affordable purchase homes on public land.

Addressing shortages 

On Wednesday, Taoiseach Simon Harris said that income from Apple back taxes and the sale of bank shares present “real possibilities” to address housing shortages.

Mr Harris said the CSO report made him “more determined” to look at supporting house building.

He said Ireland was spending the second most on housing in Europe in an effort to “catch up on loss” after the economic crash.