Today’s confirmation of house completion figures for 2025 by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) highlights the real reason why the government abandoned setting annual targets, according to Social Democrats TD Rory Hearne.
Deputy Hearne, who is the party’s housing spokesperson, said:
“With just 36,284 homes delivered last year – which falls significantly short of what’s required to tackle this crisis – the CSO figures present a grim but unsurprising picture of government housing policy in freefall.
“On the publication of its housing plan back in November, the government abandoned its own target of 41,000 house completions for 2025, knowing well it wouldn’t come anywhere close to achieving these numbers. It has today been confirmed that this target has been missed by 4,716 homes.
“The government is just spinning its wheels on housing. Completely out of ideas, it continues to be over-reliant on investors and institutional landlords to fill in the gaps. Not only that, but Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are actively in the process of hiking up rents for investor funds.
“There have been no emergency measures to empower local authorities or Approved Housing Bodies (AHBs) to scale up delivery, nor have there been any moves to increase State capacity to build houses directly.
“Instead, there has been announcement after announcement all geared at lining investors’ and large landlords’ pockets. Glaringly absent has been any coherent plan to deliver affordable and social homes at scale.
“It’s very simple – if you don’t legislate to deliver housing, then housing will not be delivered.
“What’s clear from today’s CSO figures is that the government did away with annualised targets in a cynical attempt to cover up its failures. At current levels of housing output, it will take a miracle to deliver the 300,000 homes promised during this government’s lifetime.
“The 2030 targets have no realistic chance of being achieved unless the government and Minister for Housing urgently change tack. Regrettably, I don’t have any confidence that this will be the case.”
January 29, 2026