Minister for Housing James Browne has admitted a pre-general election Government promise to build 41,000 new homes this year is now “very, very difficult” and will be “an extreme climb to reach”.
For the second time in a week, the minister conceded the high-profile commitment is now unlikely to happen, a situation which is likely to be further criticised by opposition parties.
Speaking to reporters at the long-awaited launch of the St Teresa’s housing development in Dublin City, which was first discussed a quarter of a century ago, Minister Browne was asked about the promised 41,000 figure and whether it will be reached.
He responded by saying: “The 41,000 figure is very, very difficult.”
“We’re coming off a much lower base from last year than we certainly hoped, so to get from 30,000 up to 41,000 is an extreme climb to reach.”
Accepting recent Central Bank and ESRI predictions on the situation, he said that most of the organisations who look at these figures are “predicting around 33,000-34,000 at this point, and they seem to be very consistent around that”.
Watch: Prime Time: Housing Minister acknowledges 2025 target unlikely to be met
“It is quite early in the year a lot of homes come on stream towards the end of the year, but I very much believe activating as quickly as possible that supply.”
Minister Browne’s latest admission that the 41,000 figure is unlikely to be met comes after he outlined a similar situation to RTÉ’s Prime Time programme on Tuesday.
The 41,000 figure has been a repeated target of opposition parties, which have alleged Government ministers publicly contradicted private advice from departmental officials in the lead-up to last year’s general election that the 2025 housing prediction would not happen.
Meanwhile, speaking at the same event, Minister Browne rejected reports his department’s Secretary General Graham Doyle, had told a conference he does not believe a housing tsar is needed.
It was reported this week that during a housing event organised by IBEC lobby group Property Industry Ireland, Mr Doyle said while an “interventionalist approach” is needed, “we never, ever used the word tsar”.
Mr Doyle added that, in a vote at the conference on whether Ireland needed a housing tsar, “I voted no”.
Responding to questions on the issue, Minister Browne said on four occasions that he believes Mr Doyle is fully “supportive” of the Housing Activation Office and was simply embroiled in “a semantics debate”.
“Well, I’ve spoken with the secretary general, he’s fully supportive of the creation of the Housing Activation Office and it having a CEO role.
“I think what he got into was almost a semantics debate around the description of the role and what it should be called, but he’s fully supportive of it.
“I’ve spoken with him since, and his support is very much there.”
When pressed on the issue, Minister Browne added that while civil servants have their views, “it’s the Government which makes the decisions and the Government will be driving on in really key decisions, the Housing Activation Office is one of those”.
The comments are likely to be of interest to thousands of people who remain in emergency housing accommodation, with the latest monthly homelessness figures due to be published by the Department of Housing this afternoon.
Asked about the figures, which were due to be published by his department this afternoon, Minister Browne said, “I haven’t seen them”.
However, he said, “if you look at homelessness in cities right across the world, even really progressive cities” there is homelessness, and he referenced challenges in Dublin City, including high rents a number of times.
