THE NUMBER OF houses being built in Ireland has been a regular feature of debates during the housing crisis.
It’s a topic that’s been fact-checked many times by The Journal over the years.
We’re only into 2023, and already we’re looking at another claim on the subject: this time by Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, who has suggested that more social houses were build in Ireland last year than ever before.
Is he right?
Last week, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar told reporters that more social housing was built in 2022 than any other year in the history of the State.
“I know people hark back to a time when more social housing was built in Ireland in the 20s, 70s and 80s. That’s actually not true,” Varadkar told reporters at a post-Cabinet press conference on January 12.
“We’ve never built more social housing than was the case of the past year.”
The Journal was unable to find definite figures for the number of social houses built in all of 2022.
We contacted the Department of Taoiseach and a spokesperson for Varadkar asking him to clarify his statement, his source for the figures and what his statement was based on.
The Journal also contacted the Department of Housing, which said: “Finalised figures for social housing delivery in 2022 are not available yet”.
However, briefing documents from the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform estimate that only 6,500 social homes were completed in 2022, as reported by The Journal last week.
While this figure is significantly higher than many recent years, it is not the highest delivery of social housing on record.
“We do know that preliminary returns suggest that more new-build social homes will have been delivered in 2022 than any year since 1975,” a response from the Department of Housing to The Journal read.
In 1975, 8,794 Local Authority houses were delivered, according to statistics from The Housing Agency, a government body that helps to deliver housing.
Data from The Housing Authority also shows that more than 7,000 dwellings were built by Local Authorities in 1984, and 6,523 were built in 1985.
This means that if the 6,500 estimate is accurate, more social homes were built in both the 1980s and 1970s than the briefing documents from the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform estimate were built in 2022.
“Historical data will show even back in the 2000s, local authority output was higher than last year,” architect Mel Reynolds told The Journal in response to the Taoiseach’s claim.
This appears to be true. The Housing Agency data also records more than 6,500 homes being delivered in the years 2003, 2007, and 2008.
However, as the figures contained in the briefing documents are estimates, and the Department of Housing did not release a confirmed figure for 2022, it is unclear if social housing delivery figures for 2022 was higher or lower than for those previous years.
‘New builds’
Depending on how one looks at it, one could argue that the 6,500 figure should not be compared directly against figures from the 70s and 80s, when only social housing provided by local authorities was counted.
“The government is calling a forward purchase – a turnkey – a ‘new build’,” Reynolds told The Journal about current Government reporting.
“These are purchases of new homes built by private developers on private land. The department produces ‘social housing progress reports’ that quantify output each quarter. However, in summaries, purchases and builds are claimed as ‘builds’.”
Dr Rory Hearne, Assistant Professor at Maynooth University, estimated that just 3,000 social homes were designed, planned and delivered by a local authority or a not-for-profit housing association in 2022, while the rest were purchased from developers.
However, as the Department of Housing did not provide an updated breakdown of the 2022 output of social housing, we are unable to accurately quantify how turnkey purchases affect the figures.
Hearne also suggested that comparing today’s housing figures with those from the past should also take population changes into account. “Our population has increased by 56% since the 1970s, up from 3.8 million to 5 million,” Hearne said.
(This is correct: the census tallied the population at nearly 3 million in 1971 , and 3.37 million in 1979. It is now more than 5 million.)
“So in order to be building an equivalent level of social housing per head of population as in 1975, the Government would need to have built 13,718 social housing units last year,” Hearne said.
“So, on the level of actual building, and per capita equivalent population wise, last year we were far from building the highest number of social housing units ever in the country.”
Leo Varadkar claimed that more social houses were built in 2022 than in any other year.
Final figures for the number of social houses built in 2022 are yet to be confirmed.
However, one estimate from the Government indicates that less social homes were built in 2022 than many years in the past. More than 2,000 more homes were delivered in 1975 than were estimated to have been delivered in 2022.
There is currently no way of knowing whether the Taoiseach’s claim is true.
We therefore find the claim that “more social housing was built in 2022 than any other year in the history of the state” is UNPROVEN.
As per our verdict guide, this means: “The evidence available is insufficient to support or refute the claim, but it is logically possible.”
With reporting by Tadgh McNally and Christina Finn.
The Journal’s FactCheck is a signatory to the International Fact-Checking Network’s Code of Principles. You can read it here. For information on how FactCheck works, what the verdicts mean, and how you can take part, check out our Reader’s Guide here. You can read about the team of editors and reporters who work on the factchecks here.
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