Moran: Government abandoning housing targets has admitted its own failure

The Green Party says the Government has admitted its own failure to deliver housing, in a year that has seen housing commencements crash since Taoiseach Micheál Martin and Tánaiste Simon Harris took office.

Speaking ahead of the official publication of the government's latest housing plan, Green Party spokesperson on housing, Cllr Oliver Moran, said:

"After a wasted year that saw housing completions crash while the government flew kites about deregulation, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have had to crawl back to a state-led approach to house building.

"Public-led house building programmes, easier-to-access local authority mortgages, increased grants for vacancy and dereliction, and self-building on public lands. That's where the thrust of the solutions to the housing emergency lie: in the state answering the housing crisis, not waiting for a 'market response' that isn’t going to come.

"The attacks on ordinary people, themselves often the victims of the housing crisis, by smearing legitimate planning observations, judicial review of state mistakes, and the undermining of environmental legislation must now stop.

"Between 2019 and Q2 2025, 329,637 residential units were granted planning permission, but only 213,790 started. The problem's not in zoning, the problem’s not in planning. The problem is that houses are not being built, because we have had a government playing at the edges for the last 12 months and now throwing their hands up at their own targets.”