Minister for Housing James Browne has acknowledged the Government is unlikely to meet its target of building 41,000 homes this year.
It follows a forecast from the ESRI which predicts just over 34,000 properties will be completed this year.
On RTÉ’s Prime Time, Mr Browne accepted that the estimate aligns with other forecasts, saying: “I wouldn’t be surprised if that is the figure at the end of this year.”
“The ESRI predictions would seem to be in line with many other predictions as well.
“It’s quite difficult at this time of the year, halfway through, to predict exactly what the outturn will be.
“Some properties coming towards the end may get completed in the last quarter, or they might fall into the next year. But it does seem to be very much on trend,” he said.
Last year, 30,330 homes were completed. Minister Browne described the 41,000 target as “extremely challenging coming off that base”.
The Government’s long-term targets say that it will deliver 300,000 homes by 2030.
Asked if he thought that figure was unrealistic, Mr Browne responded: “I think anyone making predictions for years three, four, and five in the lifetime of this Government is very dangerous.
“It’s difficult enough to predict in the middle of the year, what’s going to happen at the end of the year.
“The State is now delivering approximately 50% of all homes in this country,” he added.
“But if we’re going to get up to 50,000 or 60,000 homes per year so people can have the homes they need, we have to activate the private sector.”
“That number of 41,000 was always going to be extremely challenging coming off that base…”
Housing Minister James Browne is asked about housing targets of 41,000 this year, following an ESRI forecast predicting 34,000 homes will be completed.@rtenews pic.twitter.com/tNE346u6sS
— RTÉ Prime Time (@RTE_PrimeTime) May 27, 2025
Earlier, Minister Browne announced a legislative change that will allow planning permissions stalled by judicial reviews to be extended, one of a host of measures he says he is bringing forward.
“That legislation will pass very quickly,” he said. “We expect [it] by the summer break and certainly no later than September.
“What we don’t want to do is simply extend plannings for the sake of it, but we want to save existing planning permissions because they’re plannings that can turn into real homes very quickly.
“All the other measures we want to take to activate housing, we need the plannings to actually exist to do that.”
Mr Brown also responded to recent reports that backbench TDs had concerns about his performance as minister.
“I was appointed as Minister for Housing, I think, on the back of my delivery as a minister of state in the Department of Justice, where I really just focused on the end result … That’s what I’m doing in housing, and that’s why I’ve made some critical decisions already.
“But over the next six or eight weeks, some very significant announcement will be made,” he said.
