Good morning.
This is a big day for the Government, when it unveils its long-awaited updated housing plan, Delivering Homes, Building Communities. Ministers and the Government’s leaders will assemble in St Teresa’s Gardens in Dublin’s inner city to announce the details. Some elements of the plan have leaked out and feature in this morning’s newspaper, as you might expect.
Cormac McQuinn has some details in this morning’s lead story.
One measure aimed at helping developers, including smaller builders, to deliver more housing is a plan for an additional €400 million in equity investment support from the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund (ISIF).
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An extra €2.5 billion in equity investment for the Land Development Agency was also confirmed, bringing its total allocation to €8.75 billion.
However, we also report that new housing commencements fell to their lowest level since the Covid-19 lockdowns in the third quarter of 2025, raising fresh doubts about the Government’s plan to deliver 300,000 new homes by 2030. Figures from Construction Information Services detail a significant slowdown in construction activity, with new housing starts down 49 per cent year-on-year between July and September.
This underlines the extent of the political imperative for the Government to change the game on housing. But will this morning’s announcements do that? The announcements themselves certainly won’t – only concrete progress, in both senses of the word, will convince people the Government is getting on top of the problem. And that seems some way off. This is, as will be pointed out today, not the first housing plan.
Also on the subject of housing, the latest Inside Politics podcast asks the question: What is wrong with Ireland’s housing and planning system?
Still no sign of FF’s presidential campaign review
The Fianna Fáil parliamentary party was told last night that the review into the presidential fiasco will not now be finished until next month – though the meeting also saw Taoiseach and party leader Micheál Martin deliver a robust defence of his leadership of the Government. His performance received a mixed response. Opponents are holding their fire for now, but the Taoiseach isn’t out of the woods yet.
Some TDs say the housing plan and the infrastructure plan due later this month are more important to them than the fate of Martin. But there is clearly a sizeable rump now firmly opposed to his leadership. What, if anything, they will do about it is an open question for now.
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New President Catherine Connolly marked her first day in the big job by visiting, inter alia, a Gaelscoil in Inchicore, where she received a rapturous welcome. However, she declined to reprise her keepie-uppies performance. Well, campaign in poetry and all that. Harry McGee was there.
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Kitty Holland reports from Citywest, where migrants complain of intimidation continuing after riots last month.
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ESB chief says emergency measures needed to provide electricity for new houses.
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The EU has launched its Democracy Shield. Exciting.
Best reads
Eoin Drea on Ireland’s deteriorating reputation in the EU.
Newton Emerson on the DUP dithering over Catherine Connolly’s inauguration.
Donald Trump may have ended the US government shutdown, but he still has problems with the Epstein files. Backgrounder is here.
Playbook
Enterprise and then Social Protection questions this morning before Leaders’ Questions at noon. In the afternoon, the Social Democrats will launch their bid to have the voting age reduced to 16, something that would require a Constitutional amendment. Anyone on for increasing it?
A quieter day at the committees, where the Public Accounts Committee will be interrogating officials about motor tax, and the committee on drug use will be talking to officials about drug use.
Full Oireachtas details here.
