Over 1,100 social homes stuck in the planning system under Government's tenure

Kenneth Fox

More than 1,100 social homes have been stuck in the same phase of the planning system for the three-and-a-half-year period that the Government has been in power.

When the Government came to power in June 2020, some 23,600 social homes were in the planning pipeline — with statuses ranging from pre-planning, pre-tender, and final tender report to on-site and completion — but some 1,150 have never progressed.

These include 52 homes in Stranorlar in Donegal, which cleared its Stage 2 approval in the fourth quarter of 2019, and 28 homes on Thomas Davis Street in Cork City which were Stage 3 approved in quarter 4 of 2019.

As the Irish Examiner reports, the figures show that 292 of those homes have never even reached the ‘on-site’ stage of the planning system.

The Department of Housing says that build programmes for multiple homes can normally be expected to take between 18 to 24 months to complete and large a number of the projects will have been delivered in the closing months of 2023.

Sinn Féin TD for Cork North Central Thomas Gould said that families on social housing waiting lists are being prevented from getting homes by delays in the planning system.

"Red tape and bureaucracy are preventing thousands of families on social housing lists from being allocated a home," he said.

Speaking in the Dáil on Thursday, Housing Minister Darragh O'Brien said December saw more than 3,000 housebuilding commencements, meaning that more than 32,800 had begun construction last year.

This is the highest number of annual commencements on record, an increase of over 21.5 per cent compared to 2022 (26,957), and is the highest number of annual residential commencements since records began in 2014.

The Department of Housing previously said that the construction status report shows that 9,782 social homes are currently on site, with an additional 13,822 homes at design stage.