State missed its target for delivery of social homes in 2024 by almost 20%

The State missed its target for delivery of social homes last year by almost 20 per cent, according to a new report published by the Department of Housing.

The Social Construction Status Report for the final quarter of 2024 confirmed that 10,596 social homes were delivered last year, 2,334 short of the target of 12,930.

Responding to the figures, Minister for Housing James Browne acknowledged the completions had fallen short of the targets and implicitly pointed to the performance of local authorities.

He said he would publish quarterly performance reports that would “clearly outline” how each local authority is delivering on individual targets for new-build social housing.

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There were shortfalls in two of the three categories of social housing. New builds totalled 7,871 units, well short of the target of 9,300. It was also fewer than the 8,110 social homes built in the previous year.

Meanwhile, only 1,223 social homes were delivered through leasing, against a target of 2,130. The only category that met its target was acquisition, at 1,501, almost exactly the target of 1,500. That figure was down on the 1,800 acquisitions in 2023.

On affordable housing, Mr Browne said a record 7,126 affordable homes had been delivered last year, well ahead of a target of 6,400 units.

Affordable homes are delivered through a combination of means including purchases, cost rentals and the First Home scheme, under which the State takes an equity stake in the dwelling.

However, Sinn Féin has queried the figures for the latter, saying it includes approvals which are not yet completed as well as the numbers for vacant property refurbishment grants. Sinn Féin said they should not have been included and the true figure for affordable homes was 4,603 dwellings.

The Minister defended the performance of his department in both areas against the background of an overall downturn in home construction last year.

“The downturn in private-sector building output raised concerns that there would be a similar hit to social housing delivery. It appears from these figures that, while there certainly has been an impact, it has not been as pronounced as may have been feared,” he said.

He said he would meet the chief executives of all 31 local authorities to get them to bring “renewed urgency” to the issue.

“Reaching our overall annual targets is dependent on each local authority meeting their target and we cannot afford for any individual local authority to fall behind,” he said.

Sinn Féin’s social housing spokesman, Eoin Ó Broin, said the report was a “very bad result” as the Government had significantly missed not only its social homes target, but also its affordable purchase and affordable rental targets by about 36 per cent.

“There’s a shortfall of new build socials and new build affordable rentals and affordable purchases. So they’ve badly missed those sets of targets,” he said.

“On social housing, they have built less houses than the year before. On affordable homes builds, it’s still 36 per cent shy of the target. It’s a very, very bad result.”

Social Democrats housing spokesman Rory Hearne accused the Government of misleading the public and of failing to take emergency actions on a “social disaster”. The affordable home delivery record was “pathetic”, he said.

“The figures for direct local authority-delivered affordable housing are shocking. Fifteen councils have no delivery of affordable purchase, including Galway city,” he said.

Labour’s housing spokesman Conor Sheehan said the figures were “shocking but not surprising”.

“We need to see the Minister publish a successor housing plan to replace housing for all with much more State-led investment including adequately capitalising the Land Development Agency,” he said.