Split emerges as department urges 'shift change' in housing policy

The subsidies in question include sometimes controversial initiatives such as the First Home and Help to Buy schemes, plans which have been accused in some quarters of actually inflating housing prices as much as helping people to buy a home. File picture: Denis Minihane

The Department of Housing has been warned by a fellow Government department that a "shift change is needed" in the country's housing strategy.

A recent briefing delivered by the Department of Public Expenditure to Department of Housing officials stressed the need for a move away from a reliance on subsidised delivery to a focus on delivering the underlying infrastructure needed to ramp up delivery.

The briefing noted that while there is “strong momentum” in terms of current housing delivery under the Housing For All strategy launched in September 2021, with roughly 33,000 new units delivered last year, the Government is “still not achieving social/affordable targets with demand outpacing delivery”.

The most controversial aspect, however, was Public Expenditure’s assertion that, in order for higher housing targets to be met, it would be perhaps necessary to divest capital “away from upfront untargeted subsidies and towards infrastructure investment to enable housing” via brownfield activation and the bolstering of water, transport and other services". 

The subsidies in question include sometimes controversial initiatives such as the First Home and Help to Buy schemes, plans which have been accused in some quarters of actually inflating housing prices as much as helping people to buy a home.

Asked for comment on the briefing paper, a housing spokesperson noted the “importance of both the Help to Buy and First Home schemes is clearly recognised in Housing for All”.

“The Government has already agreed to extend the Help to Buy Scheme until 2025,” they said. “The First Home Scheme is also very successfully helping first-time buyers, with more than 4,000 approvals since its inception in July 2022, and recently Government agreed to an additional €40m allocation for the scheme.” 

“No changes to those schemes have been proposed,” they added.

The Department of Public Expenditure meanwhile said that “there is continuous engagement and dialogue across Government departments on developments, evidence and analysis in key policy areas like housing".

“However, the strategic development of housing policy is a matter for the Department of Housing,” a spokesperson added.

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The DPER briefing has been viewed internally as a deliberately provocative policy paper designed to “get the department to think a little bit harder about where the money is being spent”, according to a source.

The Government has only recently come to accept that the housing targets contained in the State’s previous national planning framework are wholly inadequate.

Last March, the Department of Housing said that a scheduled revision to the NPF, due to be published in April and which would have seen housing targets redefined for each county, would now not be published before next September. 

The move led Sinn Féin housing spokesperson Eoin Ó Broin to question the department’s motives for doing so given the revised targets would not then be received before June’s local and European elections.

Mr Ó Broin said that he was in “no doubt” that the publication had been delayed "until after the election in case to do so would raise political issues".