MINISTER FOR ENTERPRISE Peter Burke has hit back at Sinn Féin’s Pearse Doherty after he likened Burke to Donald Trump for claiming Ireland has reached “record levels” of home ownership.

Doherty has accused Burke of talking from Donald Trump’s playbook after the Fine Gael TD made the claim on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland this morning.

Burke was asked to respond to a report published by Savills’ today which found that population growth in Ireland exceeded the delivery of new homes by almost four to one.

It was put to Burke that Fine Gael “own” the issues in the housing sector, but Burke said this was absolutely not the case. 

Burke argued that the Government is now building homes at record levels.

“Don’t listen to politicians, judge the evidence, we are at record levels of home ownership now in this country again and people can see the trajectory to getting the key to their first home now because of the supports we have put in place,” he said. 

Responding to these comments this afternoon, Doherty, Sinn Féin’s finance spokesperson, said Burke’s assertion was incorrect and home ownership rates in Ireland have actually been falling.

Doherty told reporters in Dublin: “I heard Peter Burke today. He’s obviously been watching a lot of Donald Trump over the last while because he’s taking from his playbook.

“He claimed in modern Ireland that we have record levels of home ownership. Home ownership under this government has been falling and that is a fact.”

However, Burke doubled down on his comments to The Journal this evening and said investment in housing is at record levels and that his comments during the Morning Ireland interview were “taken out of context”.

When asked by The Journal if he wanted to clarify his comments on Morning Ireland, Burke said: “Investment is at record levels. Homeownership isn’t that far away though either as a percentage”.

Responding to the Trump comparison, Burke said he “doesn’t want to make personal comparisons” but made the point that Trump previously attended a Sinn Féin fundraising event in the 1990s. 

He asked how much money Sinn Féin has received from Donald Trump. 

Savills analysis

The new analysis by Savills found that Ireland is an “outlier” in the severity of its housing supply challenge.

Looking at population growth in comparison with housing delivery between 2015 and 2023, the analysis shows that 3.8 people were added to the population for every one new unit of housing delivered, a ratio of nearly four to one.

It said this is by far the worst among the countries analysed and 14% higher than the next worse country, Spain, which saw 3.4 new people per one new unit delivered, followed by Canada with a ratio of 2.9.

Ireland’s ratio was 80% worse than that of the UK (2.1 ratio) and double that of Australia (1.9 ratio).

“The reports are saying very, very clearly what’s happened here. The amount of homes that are being built is not at the magnitude or the scale that is required in relation to dealing with the crisis that we have,” Doherty said.

“The number of homes that are coming on to the market are a fraction of those that are being built in any given year, because obviously there is a large part of the build-to-rent sector which has been part of that, and other sectors as well.”

With reporting from Cate McCurry, Press Association