O'Brien admits 40,000 new homes needed to meet demand

Housing Minister Darragh O'Brien: 'We won't be happy until we're getting to at least 33,000 [housing completions] a year. But to meet unmet demand, we do need to be getting to that 40,000 figure.'

The Government's Housing For All plan is "always under review", the Housing Minister said, but acknowledged that to meet demand 40,000 new homes would need to be built.

Darragh O'Brien was responding to questions on whether the plan — launched in 2021 — was based on faulty assumptions that Ireland would need 33,000 new homes built per year, rather than more than 40,000 as projected by the Department of Housing.

Mr O'Brien said the construction industry would need time to "scale up" to exceed this year's target of 24,600.

"It's about building capacity [in this sector]. If you look at 2020 and 2021, we were at 20,000 homes built. We targeted 24,600 this year and we will exceed that. The plan is always kept under review — we've had changes in population and demand.

Mr O'Brien said: "We're not going to go from 20,000 to 40,000 in the course of a year. It's about building capacity up. Where's that capacity now? If you look at pre-pandemic levels of people working in the sector, there's about 20,000 more people working in the construction sector now, many of them in residential.

"We won't be happy until we're getting to at least 33,000 [housing completions] a year. But to meet unmet demand, we do need to be getting to that 40,000 figure."

The minister said that there was an issue with supply chain inflation but said the Housing For All plan would not be reviewed until the end of next year. He said the Government is targeting 29,000 housing completions in 2023. 

In order to plug the skills gap, he said the Government was working with people who had left Ireland to bring them home and back into the construction sector.

Mr O'Brien said the Consolidated Planning Bill, which will overhaul the planning regime in Ireland, would come before Cabinet in December.

Mr O'Brien was speaking as his department's €50m Croí Cónaithe vacant property refurbishment grant was expanded to take in both one-off rural housing and homes within cities. 

Mr O'Brien said the fund has had 426 applications, which could equate to about €20m. Under the scheme, property owners can get a grant of up to €30,000 for vacant homes and up to €50,000 for derelict homes. Mr O'Brien said he hoped to see the scheme oversubscribed and would expand money available in this scenario.

He said it "make sense" to use existing homes to add to the housing stock as it was faster and better for the environment.

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