The People Before Profit representative in County Louth, James Renaghan, has accused outgoing Fianna Fáil Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien of deliberately misleading the electorate in the run up to the general election about the number of house completions.
“Throughout 2024, Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien repeatedly claimed that about 40,000 new homes would be completed in 2024” Reneghan said. “The Government maintained this fiction through the election campaign, but now that the election is over we know that they fell far short of that.
“It’s clear that the electorate was misled by the Minister and the Government about the likely level of housing completions in 2024 to create the impression of progress on the housing crisis as the election approached. This is a deception carried out for electoral gain.”
“Last week the CSO published data on new housing completions in 2024 and it shows that just 30,330 new homes were built in 2024. That’s significantly lower than the low level of completions in 2023.
“Data on completions of social and affordable homes is not yet available, but at the end of June last year, only 1,174 of the Government’s target of 9,300 new-build social homes were completed at the half year point.
“Of the 4,400 affordable promised by the Government, just 552 were completed by the end of June. It is therefore very likely that the full year completions for social and affordable homes are far below Government targets.
“We also now know that the new Programme for Government is just a restatement of the housing policies of the last government. The housing crisis will not be solved by repeating the same failed market-based policies that successive Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael governments have pursued.
“Radical measures are urgently required. In particular, the establishment of a state construction company is essential to transform housing by enabling the state to build the tens of thousands of social and affordable homes we urgently need.”
