The continued downward trend in house commencement notices has been described by Social Democrats TD Rory Hearne as another ominous sign that the government won\u2019t come anywhere close to reaching its 40,000 new homes target for 2025.<\/p>\n
Deputy Hearne, who is the party\u2019s housing spokesperson, said:<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery other day seems to bring further bad news on the housing front. Yesterday it was revealed that the Central Bank had revised downwards its house completion estimates, with just 32,500 homes forecast for this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is well short of the government\u2019s own target of 40,000 for 2025. However, even the Central Bank\u2019s more pessimistic estimate will be difficult to achieve given the latest monthly home start figures released by the Department of Housing.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey show there were only 1,156 commencement notices for new homes lodged in August \u2013 the lowest figure for that month since 2016. The previous month\u2019s commencements, at 1,059, were also worryingly low.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis means that, so far this year, the total number of house commencements stands at just 8,540. This is truly shocking and shows that the housing crisis is spiralling out of control under this government.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn the basis of these figures, how on earth can Fianna F\u00e1il\/Fine Gael stand over the programme for government commitment to deliver 300,000 homes by 2030?<\/p>\n
\u201cThis government is two-faced in its housing policy, outwardly saying funding isn’t an issue and then restricting finance for social housing. Its own Minister for Housing has negatively impacted housing delivery by delaying and denying funding to housing associations and cancelling public-private partnership (PPP) social housing projects.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am once again urging the government to immediately act on the Social Democrats\u2019 proposal for a Homes for Ireland Savings Account, which would leverage some of the \u20ac160 billion in Irish savings to build desperately needed affordable homes over the next five years.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe government is clearly out of ideas when it comes to solving the housing emergency. It would be very much in the public interest if it listened to constructive proposals put forward by others.\u201d<\/p>\n
September 19, 2025<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The continued downward trend in house commencement notices has been described by Social Democrats TD Rory Hearne as another ominous sign that the government won\u2019t come anywhere close to reaching its 40,000 new homes target for 2025. Deputy Hearne, who is the party\u2019s housing spokesperson, said: \u201cEvery other day seems to bring further bad news […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":12682,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,7,510],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-housing-crisis","category-press-release","category-rory-hearne"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n