Taoiseach Micheál Martin has welcomed the findings of an Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) report which indicates that house prices could fall by 12 percent by 2030 if output was increased by 10,000 units a year for the remainder of this decade.
Speaking at the launch of the Macroom Bypass in Co Cork on Friday, Mr Martin insisted that building houses with more speed and increasing supply is key in terms of getting to grips with the crisis in housing in this country
“Supply is the answer to the price issue but also to enabling younger generations to get access to houses that are affordable to rent and affordable to buy.
“We are looking to develop a greater number of social and affordable houses on public lands with a more accelerated planning process, as the minister has announced in the Dail this week, to enable us to get more rapid build houses built on council lands in 2023.”
[ ESRI urges State to issue more visas to non-EU construction workersOpens in new window ]
Tánaiste Leo Varadkar has said that he hopes to exceed the housing target of 29,000 for 2023.
Speaking in Galway at the launch of Construct Innovate, a new Enterprise Ireland Technology Centre based at University of Galway, he said that the Government will do everything they can to solve the housing crisis.
“There’s a huge shortage of houses and apartments and places to live in Ireland and we have to do everything we can, leave no stone unturned to make sure that we turn the corner in the housing crisis because it’s affecting people in so many different ways,” Mr Varadkar said.
“Whether it’s people paying high rents, whether it’s people who can’t afford to buy their first home, whether it’s people who are experiencing homelessness, whether it’s companies who are finding it hard to recruit and retain staff, it is holding us back in so many different ways.”
This comes as the People Before Profit grouping in the Dáil tabled a motion of no confidence in the Housing Minister, Darragh O’Brien.
The motion notes the “failure of the Government to deliver on the worsening housing and homelessness crisis,” and states that it is “tearing apart the social fabric of Irish society”.
On this, the Tánaiste said that he feels as though targeting the Housing Minister is wrong: “I know him personally, I know him as a colleague, I know he’s working really hard. I know he’s doing absolutely everything he can to improve the situation when it comes to housing, and he has my full support and that of my party.
“Minister O’Brien has been housing minister for just over two years now. I think we have seen significant progress in a lot of areas, this year we’ll build 28,000 I think new homes, more than any in the past 10 years… Yes, we need to make progress and sadly we are going in the wrong direction on some things like homelessness, but that can be turned around,” he said.
