TAOISEACH SIMON HARRIS has said the number of houses delivered this year “will be well upwards” towards 40,000 or “certainly the high 30s [thousands].
Harris has said the election should not become an “auction” on housing targets where political parties try to “outbid” each other.
His comments come a day after a Dáil row broke out at Leaders’ Questions between Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien and Sinn Féin’s Pearse Doherty over the number of new houses that will be delivered for 2024.
New figures showed there were 8,939 new dwellings completed in the third quarter of the year.
According to these and previous Central Statistics Office (CSO) figures, there have been 21,664 new dwellings completed so far this year, down on 22,521 completions during the same nine-month period last year.
Doherty said it was “delusional” and “not credible” to say that 19,000 more homes would be built in the next 12 weeks.
Speaking at Government Buildings this afternoon, the Taoiseach said the 40,000 figure came from a letter he received from the housing minister, which told the party leaders that 40,000 homes was “quite possible this year”.
“I think what is very clear at this stage is the number is going to exceed the target. So yet again, I believe we will exceed our housing targets this year compared to the number set.
“It’s always impossible to know until until the very end of the year, and even into next the exact final number of completions. But what we do know is in the last couple of years, we’ve seen a very significant increase in the final quarter,” said Harris.
While Harris said he fully respected bodies such as the Central Bank of Ireland and the ESRI, he added “it is just a statement of fact that in recent years we’ve overshot their projections in the end of the year”.
“The advice available to me from the Department of Housing is that the pipeline is suggesting that that may well happen again,” said the Taoiseach.
Harris said housing is the number one priority for government, adding that he will set out in the Fine Gael manifesto how the 50,000 to 60,000 new homes can be delivered over the lifetime of next government.
Rather than political parties plucking numbers and targets from thin air, every party should have to show a fully costed plan of how to ramp up housing delivery, he said.
“The carpet has to fit the room in terms of the level of resource available and the scale of the ambition,” he said.
“I don’t think it’s helpful to get into some sort of auction in terms of the number of homes and everybody promising a bigger number than the next person.
“I think what’s much more useful to people who want to get out of the box room and into a home, much more useful for the parent who wants to know if their young person is going to be able to buy a home, is to show people credibly how you can both grow the number of homes in a realistic manner and how you’re going to pay for it.
“You can set the housing figures right now – anybody can say 50,000, 60,000 – there’s a complexity that I think is really important I think that’s going to become very clear during the election campaign.
When asked if the new housing targets will be published before the election is called, the Taoiseach said it would be his preference that a discussion on figures is anchored with the new targets being published before an election takes place.
“Whether that will be possible or not, I think will become clear in the coming days,” he said.
Harris said an “honest’ conversation needs to take place on housing stating that as you scale up the number of homes delivered, and with the retention of schemes such as the Help-to-Buy and First Home schemes, then the cost of those schemes rises as well.
“We’re going to have to have very honest debate around that,” he said.
“I’m very confident that there is an ability to do a lot more on housing in terms of supply and a number of other important things that I think people will want to debate and discuss,” said the Taoiseach.
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