Minister for Housing won’t say whether social and affordable targets will be met
By Gráinne Ní Aodha, PA
Minister for Housing Darragh O’Brien would not say whether the Government would reach its social and affordable new-build housing targets for the year.
It comes after Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said it was uncertain whether the Government will meet the targets set out in its Housing for All plan.
It was put to Mr O’Brien on Friday that figures published this week show the Government is lagging behind its social and affordable target for 2023, set at 9,100 and 5,500 respectively.
Mr O’Brien said the last quarter will see a high number of completions and that this will be a “good year for housing delivery”.
He said: “The last quarter is very strong on delivery, as it was last year. We delivered over 6,000 new social homes in the last quarter of last year, we’ll actually do more than that this year.
“Now I don’t get into predictions, what I’m telling you is it’s my job to deliver homes for people. By the end of this year, since I took over as Housing Minister, we’ll have delivered over 100,000 new homes in this country.
“See the commencement figures yesterday – really, really strong.
“We’ve commenced nearly 30,000 new homes this year alone, planning permissions up, commencements up, completions up as well. We have a couple of weeks now left to close off this year and it’ll be a very strong year on delivery.
“It is actually building on the progress that we’ve made already. We have more to do in that space with a strong pipeline for next year too. So this will be a good year for housing delivery.”
Mr O’Brien denied the Government was taking homes out of the private market to boost its social and affordable stock.
“Absolutely not. And be very clear on this, the homes that are being delivered, and we’ve targeted 9,100 new social homes, new builds, and we’ve an overall target of over 11,500, and I can tell you here that I predict we will attain that target, and that will be through a mix, the vast majority of new builds. There will be some acquisitions.
“Like the scheme that we brought in, the purchase of homes with tenants in-situ. We’ve over 2,500 of those actually concluded already.”
He added: “Cost rental didn’t exist 20 months ago, we have now hundreds of cost-rental tenancies in place.
“In the month of November alone I approved 1,600 further ones, good, new apartment developments all across our cities in the country that we haven’t seen in 10 to 12 years.
“There will be people who try to deny that progress, and that’s fine, that’s their job, but they’ve got to come up with alternatives and no alternatives have been brought forward.
“There is real progress being made and when we close out this year, and in quarter one next year, when we publish the figures, it will be there for everyone to see that real progress has been made under Housing for All.”