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THIS WEEK, MINISTER for Housing Eoghan Murphy survived a second no confidence motion against him in the Dáil in 15 months.
The embattled minister has overseen a continuing rise in homeless figures and spiralling rents, despite suggestions that the housing crisis would ease as the delivery of new homes under Rebuilding Ireland continued.
But Murphy narrowly survived Tuesday’s motion by three votes, and defiantly dismissed the attempt to remove him as a “stunt”.
During a speech ahead of the vote, he defended his record on housing and Rebuilding Ireland, pointing to several figures which he claimed demonstrated that the government’s housing action plan was working.
Said Murphy:
We still have two years to go [on Rebuilding Ireland], but we have already delivered 64,000 new places to live. In the last 12 months, 26,000 new homes started under construction on new sites.
More than 30,000 homes have planning permission. These numbers are increasing. Only 4,500 homes were built in 2013, as I have said, but this year we will build more than 20,000 homes.
But how many homes are actually coming into the market through Rebuilding Ireland? And how many of these are new homes, as opposed to tenancies secured through the private rental market?
With so many different statistics cited when it comes to housing, let’s look at how many houses the government is really delivering, as well as how they’re doing it.
New builds versus deliveries
To unpack the figures mentioned by Murphy, it’s important to look at the language used by the minister when he talks about the number of new homes that make up official housing statistics.
In the quote above, he mentioned the ‘delivery’ of 64,000 new homes in three years, and said that 20,000 new homes will be built this year, which are not the same thing.
When the government says that it has ‘delivered’ a home, it means that one unit of housing has become available for an individual or family to live in.
But every ‘delivery’ does not just mean a new house or apartment has been built; deliveries can also come from the private rental market.
If a local authority builds a house, that counts as one ‘delivery’, as it does if a house is leased from a private developer.
But every time a tenant rents a house from a private landlord using the Housing Assistance Payment (HAP), that also counts as one ‘delivery’ – at least according to the figures cited by Rebuilding Ireland, the government’s five-year housing action plan.
And what’s more, the 64,000 figure cited by Murphy isn’t even the same as the number of homes which are counted deemed to have been delivered under Rebuilding Ireland.
Data differences
So where does the figure come from?
When asked to clarify, a Department of Housing spokesman said Murphy was referring to CSO statistics on ‘new dwelling completions’, which state that 64,595 new places to live were delivered between July 2016 and September 2019.
That statistic is made up of 52,647 ’brand new’ completions, another 3,657 completed homes in unfinished housing estates, and 8,291 more homes which were returned to use after they were deemed to have been vacant for at least two years.
But it’s been argued that this method could over-state the delivery of housing.
The primary data source used by the CSO for ‘new dwellings completions’ is new ESB connections, where the date that a house is energised determines the date it is completed.
However, this means a big number of vacant homes which have simply been re-energised being counted – one in eight ‘new completions’ in that 64,000 cited by Murphy, for example, is simply a home that has been re-energised.
Another method of counting new completions is commencement notice data, which is what Murphy was referring to when he said that “26,0000 new homes were started under construction on new sites” in the last 12 months.
But there’s another issue using this method: it could lead to the opposite problem of using ESB connections, as entire blocks of apartments and estates can be covered by one notice.
Similarly, many houses, estates and blocks of apartments aren’t completed in the same year they are commenced, so it’s hard to know how useful this method is for evaluating the delivery of housing.
Rebuilding Ireland deliveries
The CSO figure cited by Murphy is also problematic because it is divergent from the number of homes that have been delivered under Rebuilding Ireland.
According to the latest Rebuilding Ireland progress report, the government delivered 84,147 homes between the launch of the plan in 2016 and the second quarter of this year.
By the end of 2019, the government hopes to have delivered more than 91,000; and given that it was just 7,000 short of that by the end of the second quarter, it seems likely that it will reach that target.
However, 60,379 of those homes have come from the private rental market: 57,002 through HAP, and another 3,377 through the Rental Accommodation Scheme (RAS).
Critics argue that such an over-reliance on the private rental market is not sustainable. Last year, the government paid almost €700 million to private landlords through rent subsidy schemes like HAP and RAS.
An additional 23,000 HAP and RAS tenancies are expected to be delivered by the completion of Rebuilding Ireland in 2021, which will only increase the large amount of money the government is paying to landlords.
Built, Acquired and Leased
In contrast, just 28% of the homes delivered under Rebuilding Ireland have come in the form of social housing: 23,768 new or second-hand homes have officially been delivered under Rebuilding Ireland.
These homes, delivered through local authorities or approved housing bodies (AHBs) – non-profit organisations whose purpose is to provide and manage social housing – are categorised in one of three ways.
2,949 new homes have been delivered through the social housing leasing scheme, where local authorities pay near market rent to private landlords for social housing over a period of 25 years.
Another 7,783 homes have been acquired from banks’ investment or loan portfolios for use as social housing.
But the number of new homes the government has actually built through local authorities or AHBs stands at 13,036, including just over 1,200 new builds during the first half of 2019.
The government is targeting an additional 5,300 new builds by the end of 2019 and another 16,600 in the next two calendar years.
That would meet the target set out in its 2016 action plan, which aims for over 5,000 new units of social housing to be built per year by 2021.
And if it is met, around 30,000 homes – or 6,000 units a year – will have been built by the government over the lifetime of Rebuilding Ireland.
That’s significantly less than the final figure used by Murphy in his speech, which said that “this year we will build more than 20,000 homes”.
Asked to clarify this, a spokesman for the Department of Housing told TheJournal.ie that the minister was referring to the number of social and private homes that will be built, based on a Central Bank estimate that 23,000 new units will be completed this year.
But much like the opposition’s confidence in the minister, even that figure is uncertain.
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In my opinion every major problem in the country at present simply stems from the fact that we cannot cope with our population increasing by 50 percent in the last 30 years.
We have a civil and public service rooted in the 18th century ( to administer the British Empire) trying to cope with a set of 21st century issues.
Not sure what the solutions are, but a good place to start is admitting you have a problem in the first place, and unfortunately I don’t see that happening anytime soon.
@Gerry Kelly: Ireland’s economy has expanded in multiples of that over the same period. As a country without resources, people are needed or Ireland goes back to the 70s/80s when no one had a job.
Successive governments have failed to recognise the population growth. New infrastructure and perhaps even whole new cities are needed. We have the space but no capacity. Not recognising this is where the responsibility lays.
@Gerry Kelly: spot on
@Gerry Kelly: Gerry that’s exactly it. They’re all stuck in the past and they can’t move forward for a modern Ireland what we need for future generations. I think it’s time to get rid of the old school system and bring in younger thinking people including getting rid of governments who do not provide value for money. Ireland looks great on paper but when you open the press everything falls out, it’s like a third world country the way it’s been run absolutely no logic whatsoever. Stuck in the past.
@Panti Bliss: we were told they are great for our economy. Aren’t they enriching the owner of the red cow hotel?
@Bren: I think everyone would agree with you but there is not one in government or opposition that fits that bill.
Ireland’s yo-yo economy repeatedly swings from property booms to devastating busts.
Each crisis is driven by inadequate government policies. 1970s,1980s, early 1990s, 2008 & a new one on the horizon.
When will a government understand housing should not be a commodity and overheating an economy will consistently cause a bust with profound economic distress….
@Bat Boy: apparently the government have finally listened to the irish fiscal advisory council and are using the apple tax money in a counter-cyclical way. They will spend it on infrastructure and housing when the next crash comes.
This should keep more builders in work at that time, stop them from emigrating, and develop a lot of the infrastructure when it is a bit cheaper to do it. And it will help get ireland out of its recession and to not overheat the economy now.
The government also has a lot of unspent funds for construction, because the industry doesn’t have the workforce to absorb it all.
The article is about regulations and planning, which do need to be sorted out.
@Brian Lynch: so at least some acknowledge there will be a crash
@Mr “JonnieBoy” Johnson: really? When?
@Bat Boy: Don’t be such a crackpot Marxist. Building a house takes materials, labor and capital, none of which are free. If you strip away the profit motive, who exactly is supposed to invest in building homes? Governments, who can’t even fill potholes efficiently? Houses don’t just appear out of thin air! Every essential good and service in society operates under supply and demand. The alternative is government rationing, which leads to shortages and inefficiency. Some of the biggest housing disasters in modern history came from this idea that housing should be a “human right” instead of a commodity. The Soviet Union, Venezuela, Cuba and East Germany have tried this and miserably failed. Government-controlled housing led to tiny, overcrowded apartments and decades-long waiting lists.
@Bat Boy: Every country has a boom and bust…..is the government in charge of all countries?
Governments promising x number of houses per year is absolutely hilarious and one of the biggest election sham promises possible to drop to the public. NO government builds houses. They can waffle about policies all they want. If it’s not profitable enough for the private contractors to build then no mass building will be done, if man power and skills isn’t available to build at the speed required it won’t be done. sites will sit there and no amount of spin and waffle on the news and radio is changing that.
@Dan The Man: If building houses was such a money spinner why are billions and billions sitting idly in savings accounts. The chilling effect of the risk of a left wing government is still in the background even though the media failed to get them elected recently.
@thomas molloy: the short answer is that the banks can make more profit from lending thos money to the ECB than risking it on loans to property developers.
The government is complicit in this as a shareholder in aib
It’s all as it is supposed to be.
High prices = more tax revenue.
High rents suit our politicians
especially those with multiple rentals.
Enormous numbers of other rental properties owned by Chinese/US or Canadian investment firms they would not be investing if not highly profitable and they are controlling the rental prices to suit.
Plus on the quiet our government are pouring money (your taxes) in to NGOs here for purchasing homes in bulk but they don’t ever mention these.
Funny how not investing in infrastructure for years seems to have nothing to do with either ff or fg considering one or the other has been in power since the establishment of the state…
This mess on housing was made by FF or FG led governments. Minister in the late 1980′s scrapping building apprenticeships and wider apprenticeship schemes has caught up. whilst large swathes of public owner land banks in county council hands was given away to the political funder builder buddies of FF and FG for miniscule amounts of money. Corruption of various tribunals adds to the mes.
Well, what a surprise (not)!!!!
Another disaster from the government how much more of this is Ireland actually going to accept , whatever happened to the fighting Irish getting out on the streets and telling the government we want better services for our taxes I think sometimes they forget they work for us , as this is disgraceful in 2025
@Bren: the problem is with the electorate, we prefer to get a few quid in the budget rather than be grown ups and spend the money on infrastructure projects that will benefit the people. Imagine a political party saying they want to increase taxes to pay for a reservoir that won’t be finished for 10 years, they wouldn’t have a chance of getting elected.
No roads,no water,no sewage,no apprenticeships,NO HOUSES…simple as.
Unfortunately, the sham government we have thinks about nothing only Europe and Europe only, stay at home, roll up your sleeves, and get stuff sorted ye overpaid fat C##ts
Not true. Huge well connected area in D13 on which developers are just sitting for decades. They gamble on more lucrative planning permissions or they won’t built.
A good article. A good example of why simplistic calls to just ’build more houses’ ignore the more nuanced issues. Could be said for a lot of topics here and abroad. Simple answers to complex questions seem neat and tidy but can often reflect a naivety.
Maybe we SHOULD spend the money on missiles after all. Less houses to get blown up during an inevitable crushing invasion lasting 1 hour.
Can all those people with their plans f off abroad. And build their inferstructur.. My local area has lost facilities in recent years due to increasing population.
I’m living in missile silo in my parents back garden hoping war does not break out. Cosy multi story!
@Go Home Tech Bro: lol.
Goes back to a 1980′s led FF government scrapped all building apprenticeship schemes and sold off all County a d state ka d banks to their business and building landlord FG buddies for a song. We’re all paying for that hubris
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