Government’s new housing plan: Delivering homelessness, blaming communities

The Government’s new housing plan is more of the same: shifting blame onto local communities and local councils, while pouring money into a broken system and rewarding land speculation.

Councillor Oisín O’Connor, Green Party Planning and Local Government spokesperson, has criticised the government’s new housing plan for scapegoating local authorities, while also setting them up for failure.

“There are 120,000 homes with planning permission in this country that have not started construction, so that’s 1 in 3 that have been granted since 2019. Thousands more are delayed by the backlog in getting electricity and water connections. Most of these homes are carefully planned and granted permission by local authorities in consultation with communities, yet Ministers Browne and Cummins are intent on pinning blame on local councils and the communities who participate in the planning process.”

“The Minister is talking about a league table of local authorities to hold councils to account. We welcome accountability, but central government is the biggest barrier holding back local authorities from delivering homes and building communities. The Irish government gives the least autonomy to local authorities in Europe, ranking 43rd out of 46 European countries.”

“The onus is on the government to support local authorities in the delivery of housing and community infrastructure, not just use us as one of the Taoiseach’s punching bags.”

“Four things the Minister could do now to empower local authorities, and get more housing delivered are:

• emergency powers to CPO vacant buildings and land
• increase funding for local authority housing
• forward fund community infrastructure
• emergency recruitment measures to make these plans a reality”