Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien has said that he would not “speculate” on how many social and affordable homes will be built by the end of the year.
This is despite Public Expenditure Minister Michael McGrath conceding last week that the Government will not hit its target of 9,000 direct build social homes last week. Instead, he said, some 8,000 social homes will be built.
The Government has repeatedly said that it will “exceed” its overall housing target of 24,600 this year. Many of these homes will be provided by the private sector.
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The Government also has a target of 10,500 social homes. This includes 4,100 affordable homes and 1,580 cost rental homes.
Recent parliamentary questions to Sinn Féin’s Eoin Ó Broin show that 373 affordable houses and 475 cost rental homes have been delivered this year.
When asked by the Irish Mirror if the Government would hit these targets, Minister O’Brien would not commit to hitting these figures.
“I'm not going to speculate on where we're going to be at the end of the year because we're not at the end of the year yet,” he said.
“What I'm saying to you is that we're going to have very, very strong delivery in the last quarter [of 2022].
“We're going to make a very significant step up on what we delivered last year and the year before and indeed in previous years.
“We're going to deliver affordable homes for the first time pretty much in a generation.
“We're going to deliver more new-build social homes than we've done in decades.
“I’m not going to speculate on where we're going to end at the end of the year and the reason for that is the last quarter is a very strong quarter for delivery.
“Our overall target for social home delivery through all our delivery streams is in the region of 10,500. I'm still confident that we're going to be able to hit that overall target.”
Speaking in the Dáil on Tuesday afternoon, Minister McGrath repeated that 8,000 social homes will be built this year and that the Government will come “close” to hitting the 10,500 target through “supplementing” supply through buying and leasing.
The Government has also asked local authorities to purchase homes for social housing purposes in cases where landlords were selling up.
Minister O’Brien said that the scheme, known as the tenant in situ scheme, has resulted in the acquisition of 650 homes this year.
Government sources told The Mirror that it is envisaged that 800 homes could be acquired through the scheme by the end of 2022.
Homelessness figures are at record levels, with 10,975 people living in emergency accommodation in October.
When Minister O’Brien was told that he would have been highly critical of these figures while in the opposition, he argued that he has been dealing with “10, 12 years of under delivery”.
Social Democrats housing spokesperson Cian O’Callaghan told The Irish Mirror: “Now that it is actually coming to the crunch and the figures aren’t reflecting the promises that he made, now all of a sudden he won’t answer questions on this from journalists.
“You can’t spend 10 months of the year saying, ‘I’m going to do something’ and then suddenly say, ‘well I can’t answer those questions because that would be speculation’.”
Sinn Féin’s Eoin Ó Boin, meanwhile, noted that Mr O’Brien published a Housing for All update for the third quarter of 2022 last week and did not provide delivery figures.
“He either doesn’t know or he does know and he is embarrassed by how poorly he is doing,” he said.
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