Government criticised for slow engagement on Housing Commission report

Director Of Advocacy at Focus Ireland Mike Allen: 'To be put on the shelf so soon was unusual, even for Irish politics.' File photo: Leon Farrell/Photocall Ireland

An author of the landmark report which called for a radical reset in Irish housing policy has said it is disappointing to see it “dismissed” by the Government so soon after its publication.

A meeting of unions, business groups and civil society organisations on Thursday heard the Government has “essentially ignored” the report of the Housing Commission.

The Department of Housing has since denied that it has ignored the report of the Housing Commission, whose 256-page report was published in May. The Commission was established in January 2022 as an an independent body to examine Ireland’s housing system and to make recommendations to shape long-term policy.

This commission was made of representatives from across the housing sector, including developers and those delivering housing on the ground, and found that Ireland’s housing system has “fundamentally systemic” failures.

It made a slew of recommendations for a new approach to the housing sector to meet the needs of the Irish public, estimating there is an underlying undersupply of over a quarter of a million homes in the country.

However, a meeting organised by homelessness charity Focus Ireland on Thursday heard sharp criticism of the Government's lack of actions on the Housing Commission report.

“That was such a piece of work which so many people had put such an amount of work into... to be put on the shelf so soon was unusual, even for Irish politics,” Focus Ireland’s director of advocacy Mike Allen said.

To have such a core of coherent thinking that so many groups agree with is hard won and not to be thrown away lightly. 

IBEC’s head infrastructure and environmental sustainability Aidan Sweeney said the country’s inability to respond to capacity pressures is the “single biggest threat to future competitiveness and social cohesion”.

Mr Sweeney said that the Housing Commission report has to inform national strategies going forward to ensure housing is delivered.

Meanwhile, Irish Congress of Trade Unions general secretary Owen Reidy linked the Government’s “failure” on housing to the potential “fraying” of the centre ground in Ireland.

“There’s something wrong when a Government goes out of its way to set up a commission, to put the amount of work into it, to come to a broad consensus, and then to essentially ignore it,” Mr Reidy said.

“The current situation is not sustainable. I think we get to a place if the populace at large feels the State is incapable of addressing a systemic failure, which is the housing situation. And we’re at a tipping point. 

They look elsewhere for simplistic solutions to complex problems. The social fabric and the centre ground will fray. We’re seeing elements of that. 

Report co-author David O’Connor, a former chief executive of Fingal County Council, said the final report was pored over line and by line and is “not a menu, it’s a recipe”.

“You can’t take it in bits, you have to take the whole thing,” he said, referencing its recommendations to reform the housing system.

He said that when the banks collapsed, NAMA was established and it’s “inconceivable” as a nation we don’t have the capacity to do similar for housing. “We were particularly disappointed to seem to have it dismissed so quickly and so early on,” Mr O’Connor said.

A spokesperson for the Department of Housing rejected the claim that the report was being ignored.

"The Government is engaging fully with the Report of the Housing Commission. Any suggestion otherwise is misinformed," they said. 

"A full assessment of the Report by the Department of Housing, including an examination of costings, and the sequencing, prioritisation and timing of implementation is underway – these matters were not dealt with in the Report as the Commission considered them to be matters for Government to determine. The Department is being supported by the Housing Agency in this regard."

They said an updated Housing for All action plan will be produced in the short-term, as well as longer-term strategies for the next five to ten years.

"The Department has also already agreed to meet Focus Ireland and other stakeholders later this month to discuss the Housing Commission report and steps to date to progress implementation," they added.