The most striking part of the speech by Taoiseach Simon Harris at the Micheál Collins event in Béal na Bláth was not the NGO like soundbite about “calling out” racism, but his reference to the crisis that no amount of “look over there, I see a Nazi” distraction will make go away. Housing.
So, in a new twist to “deplatform” the housing crisis and in what sounds like an imminent election promise, Harris said that perhaps they might consider using some of the proceeds of the sales of bailed out bank shares to fund the housing programme.
He provided no other detail and there are those of us who would argue that it is a bit late for imaginative thinking at this stage with regard to the disastrous saving of a bankrupt financial elite and their bond-holding buddies.
Happily, the housing sector has been the way in which some of the principals in all of that, including some of the so-called vulture funds, have re-inserted themselves into another mess at our expense.
There is little sign that the current government has a grip on the housing situation, nor much indication that any of the opposition parties of the Left hold the key. Basic arithmetic shows that it would be impossible to “solve” the housing crisis while at the same time adding to the waiting list like some demented roulette gambler who keeps doubling their stake.
When perhaps realising that even creating Stakhanovite shock brigades comprised of brickies who have fled north London to find sanctuary with IPAS might not be sufficient, the communists in People Before Profit propose seizing “160,000 empty homes.”
Or some might force Granny, as did communists when they were in power, to move into the box room like the Zhivago family to make space for 20 homeless derelicts and “refugees.”
In fairness, neither the far left nor Sinn Féin have been responsible for the current situation so we’ll leave them be for the moment. And in fairness to the current government they have actually been sort of hitting the bar when it comes to their targets – but, as we will see, those targets are inadequate.
In 2022 Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien had set a target of 24,600 new completions. The Construction Industry Federation, the lads who employ the lads who build the houses, were more bullish at between 26,000 and 27,000, The CSO reported the eventual figure as 29,851.
Last year, all sides were even more inclined to be optimistic. Initially the wet blankets of the ESRI and the Central Bank were agreed that the total for 2023 might be around 27,000 but O’Brien was like the chap who backed the first Willie Mullins favourite on opening day at Cheltenham and assured his Cabinet colleagues that there would be more than 33,000 new completions.
As it happened, there was a shortfall, but only a small one of several hundred and the final total for the four quarters of 2023 as reported by the CSO was 32,810. That is just short of the 33,000 annual target which the Government’s Housing For All strategy said would need to be met over the period from 2021, more of which anon.
This year looks like witnessing a falling back on that and certainly on 36,000 which was forecast by Ernst & Young as recently as June who also predicted that there would be another 41,000 completions in 2025.
In the first half of 2024 there were just 12,725 completions which was well down on the first six months of 2023. Completions tend to increase in the second half of the year for obvious reasons but even at that it would seem highly unlikely that there will be another 20,000 completions to reach the Housing for All target.
This would mean that last year was the only year in which the coalition came close to achieving its target. While the target for 2021-2024 was 132,000, the likely delivery will be around 113,000, a shortfall of almost 20,000.
Bad and all as that might seem, it is crystal clear that the 33,000 annual target even if achieved would be inadequate to meet either latent demand – the accumulated demand due to previous shortfalls – or current and future demand. The reason for this is that the population has expanded and will continue to grow at a rate not taken into account by the National Development Plan, or in any state plans based on the forecasts upon which it was based.
This has been evident even since before the post Covid surge of inward migration with ever growing numbers of persons coming here to work, to seek asylum, as students and as persons who can claim residency rights from being related and dependent on persons who are already here.
Three years ago I wrote a piece here which questioned the demographic forecasts on which the NDP and consequently the state housing targets were based. The NDP had set a modest target of 25,000 up to 2020 but even that was not reached, with a shortfall of 15,000 between 2018 and 2020.
Realising that the target was meaningless in the face of mostly migrancy driven demand – although no-one mentioned that – the ESRI upped the target to between 26,000 and 33,000 and the latter was taken on board by the Fianna Fáil/Fine Gael/Green coalition in 2020 as part of their programme for government.
There were others who realised even that was inadequate. In an August 2020 report for the Irish Institutional Property group Ronan Lyons stated that each 10,000 new migrants would require 4,000 new dwellings. He said that the state would need to be building 47,000 new houses and apartments every year to cater for latent and future demand.
The reason why the housing targets were so far off target is that the CSO in 2013 was estimating an annual net migration of 10,000 by 2021 and that the rate would increase to an average of 30,000 per year up to 2046. Last year alone, there were almost 86,000 permits granted to persons who came to live in the Irish state. Net migration was officially estimated at 77,600.
The CSO has now upped its forecast for annual net migration to 45,000 in what they describe as a high migration scenario but which is actually a gross under-estimate of current and likely future migration trends. Even if their forecasts are correct, the current targets for new dwelling completions, even if met, are totally inadequate.
When we are in a situation where large tech companies like Google and a domestic company like Ryanair are taking control of apartments and houses just to accommodate their own employees, something is clearly amiss.
Particularly when working couples are unable to find a place to live and thousands of young people are leaving the country because they can either not access or afford a place of their own. If demand continues to be largely driven by external factors this is not going to change any time soon.