LOCAL authorities are failing to meet their social housing targets with Dublin City Council, Donegal, Sligo and Galway City among the worst offenders, the Cabinet will be told today.
Our city and county councils are relying significantly on Approved Housing Bodies to carry out the bulk of their building instead of building social homes directly themselves.
For example, Dublin City Council directly built just 35 new homes last year.
Instead, the City Council relied on approved housing bodies and other methods to obtain 937 social homes last year.
Despite this, Dublin City managed to reach less than half of the overall target for the year of 1,974.
Housing Minister James Browne will today brief Ministers on a new league table-style document analysing each local authority’s output when it comes to building homes for social housing.
The table, seen by the Irish Sun, shows that almost half of local authorities failed to hit their social housing targets over the past three years.
When 2022, 2023 and 2024 are taken together – Donegal is bottom of the table with just 248 social homes provided out of a target of 534.
Dublin City Council is the second worst performer on social housing with 2,344 social homes provided over the last three years – just 49 per cent of their target of 4,800.
Laois is top of the table for providing social housing with 670 homes built over the past three years – way above the target of 359.
Meath and Wicklow are second and third best performers when it comes to social housing providing 1,405 and 1,206 homes respectively.
In total, local authorities had a target to build 27,400 social homes over the past three years but only 5,065 were directly built by local authorities.
WORST PERFORMERS
Instead, 18,320 homes were built through approved housing bodies and other methods.
When it comes to council’s directly building their own social housing, Dublin City Council was the worst performer last year followed by Louth County Council who built just four new homes – three per cent of their 160 target.
Minister Browne will publish this league table data today as he aims to ensure transparency and accountability across all levels on housing.
This social housing data is part of a series of housing memos that the Minister will bring to Cabinet today.
The Minister will bring forward a plan to create standardised social housing with the same plans being used in different developments across the country to speed up the process.
Ministers will also be told about plans to bring a Planning and Development Bill to try to unlock developments that have been held up in the planning system and risk running out of date.
