Budget 2017: Housing rebate has a lot of heavy lifting to do

Housing, according to Michael Noonan's budget speech, is a "priority" for the Government. HIs colleague Paschal Donohoe has said it is a "core priority", and for Simon Coveney it is "the priority" for Government.

Be in no doubt, all three are taking the shortage of housing very seriously - and they’d want to be with the number of new homes coming on stream still abysmally low.

Mr Coveney said on Tuesday that he expected 14,000 new houses would be built by the end of the year. That’s about 1,300 more than in 2015, but a long way off the 25,000 figure the Housing Agency says is required each year - and keeps growing with every year of under supply.

The actual figures of what’s been built so far, available up to the start of last month, show 9,167 homes were built nationally, and 2,620 were built in Dublin, where the agency says about 10,000 a year are needed.

Mr Noonan says his first-time-buyers rebate will sort this out.

“In all markets, supply increases to meet demand” he said.

People just haven’t been demanding enough, clearly.

In terms of the construction of social homes - it’s almost best not to look. The statistics lag further behind those for general supply, but up to end of June, 237 had been built, 100 of which were in Dublin.

Where that fits in with what was promised in last year’s budget, is a little hard to define. Under Budget 2016 about 1,500 social housing units were to be built, or bought, by local authorities or the not for profit housing sector.

Another 1,500 vacant council houses and flats were to be refurbished and brought back into use.

Changed targets

Rebuilding Ireland, the housing action plan published last July, has changed these targets, and changed the way they are expresssed, in a way that makes comparison difficult (it also took the wind out of the sails of the budget announcements as most measures referred back to the action plan).

Rebuilding Ireland has a target of 2,260 homes being built in 2016 and 1,755 acquisitions. The 2,260 of built alone, looks great, but this figure now includes the refurbishment of vacant houses - 2,000 of which are expected to be brought back into use by the end of the year. This leaves a target, of 260 new social houses to be built by the end of the year. With 237 already completed in the first eight months, it looks like that’s running ahead of target.

The 2017 figure for the construction of social housing is more ambitious still. A total of 3,200 are to be “built”, and the proportion of these which will be refurbished empty houses is significantly lower at 800, leaving 2,400 to be built by councils, housing bodies or by developers who have to provide 10 per cent of estates for social housing.

Fewer private houses are will be bought next year, at 1,250. This means that the largest proportion of the 21,000 households will be in some form of private rented accommodation.

Mr Coveney said the first time buyers rebate will free up space in the private rented sector.

The rebate has a lot of heavy lifting to do.