{"id":409513,"date":"2026-04-21T05:48:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-21T05:48:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/409513\/"},"modified":"2026-04-21T05:48:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-21T05:48:08","slug":"ireland-is-delivering-more-social-homes-but-that-doesnt-mean-it-is-building-them-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/409513\/","title":{"rendered":"Ireland is \u2018delivering\u2019 more social homes, but that doesn\u2019t mean it is building them \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the fourth year in a row the Government has failed to meet its social housing delivery targets. Figures for output by local authority were published this week, and they show that the Government achieved about 91 per cent of its own target of 10,000 new social houses<\/a>. That may not look like a bad result \u2013 but as always, the devil is in the detail.<\/p>\n

To create a stable stock of social housing, how it is delivered and by whom is as important as how much was built.<\/p>\n

Of the 9,088 new social houses delivered last year \u2013 and that language is important because delivered is not the same as built \u2013 just 1,600 \u2013 or 17 per cent \u2013 were directly built by local authorities. Councils in D\u00fan Laoghaire Rathdown, south Dublin, Cork city and Kildare all managed to directly build more than 100 new houses. Another 10 local authorities achieved less than 10 per cent of their annual direct build target, with Kerry at the higher end with 8.7 per cent (25 houses). Tipperary hit just 1.8 per cent of its target, building three new houses. <\/p>\n

Thirteen of the 31 local authorities in the State missed their overall social housing output target, which includes social housing acquired from all sources, not just directly built \u2013 with Limerick, Sligo and Longford delivering less than half of their objective. Longford fared particularly badly, achieving 15 per cent \u2013 or 12 houses \u2013 of what it was asked to deliver. Together, these 13 councils delivered 3,864 social houses (only 659 of which were directly built). For context, the combined social housing waiting list for these 13 locations is 32,795.<\/p>\n

Alongside the 1,600 directly built houses, councils delivered another 1,268 houses through what is known as \u201cturnkey\u201d. This is where a council either buys a completed new unit from a developer or agrees to fund a developer who might have planning permission to build the housing, and the council acquires them when finished. <\/p>\n

Between directly built houses and turnkey acquisitions, councils accounted for 32 per cent of all new social housing in 2025. When Ministers boast of delivering the highest number of social houses since the 1970s, they tend not to mention the fact that in the 1970s local authorities would have built all the housing directly, not less than a third of it.<\/p>\n

Approved Housing Bodies delivered another 4,215 social houses, of which they built just 189 in nine council areas. The remaining 95 per cent were turnkey acquisitions. <\/p>\n

Councils and AHBs buying new housing units \u2013 and they are nearly all apartments \u2013 from developers is the lifeline keeping the apartment sector going. <\/p>\n

From one perspective, this means councils and AHBs are competing with the public to buy these apartments. Industry figures regularly point out, however, that they would probably not have been built were it not for the State in one form or another agreeing to buy them. It\u2019s true that the State is the market for any developer who has land and planning permission for apartments. And as such, it should be able to achieve great value and drive down prices. So why isn\u2019t that happening? <\/p>\n

The policy of mixed tenure \u2013 where social, affordable and private housing are combined \u2013 is frequently abandoned as apartment blocks get used entirely for social housing. <\/p>\n

The State is evidently hugely reliant on AHBs for its supply of social housing. Aside from the inherent risk that comes with not being able to directly control the supply of houses from AHBs, these houses are not part of the State\u2019s own social housing stock. Once their government loans have been paid off \u2013 and some of the earliest AHB loans are now ending \u2013 they can do what they want with them.<\/p>\n

At a meeting of councillors for the Dublin North Central Area in March, Jo Whittall, the deputy chief operations officer of Cl\u00faid \u2013 Ireland\u2019s largest housing charity \u2013 told councillors it would like in future to sell off some social homes it owns to private buyers. These would most likely be ones they feel are too expensive to maintain. AHBs are nonprofit, so the money would be recycled to build more housing. <\/p>\n

This is what has happened in cities such as London and Madrid in recent years, particularly as a lot of social housing is in what are now considered desirable city centre locations where rents and property values are high. What was State-funded affordable housing for low-income households almost overnight became expensive private rental accommodation, and the original households moved to other locations, including other cities. A lot of social housing that was sold off was not replaced, but the funds diverted elsewhere.<\/p>\n

Much AHB social housing is built on land donated by the State, as well as being funded in large part also by the State, so to see this happen would be a travesty.<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for the Department of Housing was quoted in reports saying that it was a matter of general policy \u201cthat AHB homes developed for social housing purposes are retained as such\u201d. But that\u2019s wishful thinking rather than an enforceable policy: the department has no control over what the AHBs do with their stock of more than 50,000 houses.<\/p>\n

Seventeen councils achieved more than their targets, with Louth delivering more than three times its goal. Even here, however, these councils built just 941 new houses out of 5,224, or 18 per cent.<\/p>\n

Having sold two-thirds of its council housing stock over the years, the State is under pressure to deliver housing for those who need it. The huge variance in social housing output across local authorities suggests that some are coping better with this pressure than others. The proportion of housing being built by councils has been declining annually, just as more housing needs to be directly built by them. <\/p>\n

AHBs and the market have a role to play in supplying social housing, but an over-reliance on both means a reduced stock of housing owned by the State and an increased risk of losing control over that supply. We\u2019ve done it before when we had far less than we do now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For the fourth year in a row the Government has failed to meet its social housing delivery targets.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":409514,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[177983,3662,61,60,43,13289],"class_list":{"0":"post-409513","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-cluid-housing","9":"tag-housing-crisis","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-social-housing"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=409513"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409513\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/409514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=409513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=409513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=409513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}