Today\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
Deputy Hearne, who is the party\u2019s housing spokesperson, said:<\/p>\n
\u201cWith just 36,284 homes delivered last year \u2013 which falls significantly short of what\u2019s required to tackle this crisis \u2013 the CSO figures present a grim but unsurprising picture of government housing policy in freefall.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn 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\u2019t come anywhere close to achieving these numbers. It has today been confirmed that this target has been missed by 4,716 homes.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe 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 F\u00e1il and Fine Gael are actively in the process of hiking up rents for investor funds.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cInstead, there has been announcement after announcement all geared at lining investors\u2019 and large landlords\u2019 pockets. Glaringly absent has been any coherent plan to deliver affordable and social homes at scale.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s very simple \u2013 if you don\u2019t legislate to deliver housing, then housing will not be delivered.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s clear from today\u2019s 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\u2019s lifetime.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe 2030 targets have no realistic chance of being achieved unless the government and Minister for Housing urgently change tack. Regrettably, I don\u2019t have any confidence that this will be the case.\u201d<\/p>\n
January 29, 2026<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Today\u2019s 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\u2019s housing spokesperson, said: \u201cWith just 36,284 homes delivered last year \u2013 which falls significantly short of what\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":12981,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,7,510],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-housing-crisis","category-press-release","category-rory-hearne"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n