Housing experts call for national home-building agency

By Cillian Sherlock, PA

Housing experts have called on the Government to establish a national and sustainable home-building agency.

A report says the proposed agency should be a State developer, construction and retrofitting business and centre of expertise which would directly build, refurbish and retrofit social and affordable homes in Ireland.

The paper setting out the proposal has been jointly authored by housing researchers Dr Rory Hearne and Phil Murphy.

It provides 10 key arguments in favour of setting up a national sustainable home-building agency, sets out why it is needed, and provides some ideas for how it might work in practice.

Speaking at a webinar to launch the policy proposal, hosted by Maynooth University Social Sciences Institute, Dr Hearne said: “We are in the midst of the worst housing crisis since the foundation of the state.

“The lack of homes is jeopardising the economy, limiting business, and threatening the ability of key public services to operate.

“Furthermore, it is resulting in a level of social trauma that is completely unacceptable in one of the wealthiest countries in the world.”

He said housing supply is falling and last month was the eighth consecutive month that activity in the construction sector fell, as shown by the construction index.

Dr Hearne added that new home commencement figures show that housing output will fall this year to just 27,000 units, down from 30,000 in 2022.

“This is market failure. The private market is not delivering homes on the scale or speed required to meet the needs of Irish economy or society.

“But it is also State failure. Successive governments have reduced the State’s own capacity to deliver housing, and handed housing supply over to the market.”

Dr Hearne said the proposed Homes for Ireland agency would be set up to employ directly all the expertise required to deliver housing, from preparation, planning and architectural design to financing and building.

He added that the current budget surplus should be used to set up the agency.

Homelessness campaigner Father Peter McVerry said: “The housing system is clearly dysfunctional and has been for the past 15 years at least.

“Tweaking a system based on the ‘market’ isn’t working. We need a new and more radical approach.

“The proposal for a national home-building agency will be vigorously opposed by some political and business interests but needs to be widely discussed and debated.

“It has the potential to transform and resolve the housing crisis.”