Budget 2025: Irish architects call on Government to deliver affordable housing

The professional body representing architects in Ireland has urged the Government to use Budget 2025 to enable the delivery of more affordable housing.

In its pre-budget submission, the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland (RIAI) laid out 11 actions that it claimed would deliver a "high-quality built environment" for Ireland.

Sean Mahon, RIAI president, said the Government needed to harness the expertise of Irish architects for the public benefit, to ensure that Ireland’s infrastructure and public spaces best serve the people.

"Ireland has the expertise needed to transform our society to best serve our citizens, by providing quality affordable homes, sustainable well-resourced communities, and a climate resilient public realm," he said.

"RIAI’s submission lays out a clear set of actions that will drive this change. What we need now is government action and leadership to use Budget 2025 to harness this expertise and deliver on this potential."

Some of the recommendations that the RIAI has included in its pre-budget submission include a higher number of architects employed in the design and delivery of public buildings, new research and innovation to provide affordable housing, and investment in third-level and post-graduate education for architecture and construction-related courses.

The recommendations come after a Savills report found that population growth in Ireland exceeded the delivery of new homes by almost four to one.

The new analysis published on Thursday found that Ireland is an “outlier” in the severity of its housing supply challenge.

Looking at population growth in comparison with housing delivery between 2015 and 2023, the analysis showed that 3.8 people were added to the population for every one new unit of housing delivered, a ratio of nearly four to one.

It said this is by far the worst among the countries analysed and 14 per cent higher than the next worse country, Spain, which saw 3.4 new people per one new unit delivered, followed by Canada with a ratio of 2.9.

Ireland’s ratio was 80 per cent worse than that of the UK (2.1 ratio) and double that of Australia (1.9 ratio).