Government’s New Old Housing Plan!

The government’s new housing plan, published this week, is just more of the same. They try to dazzle us with numbers but as soon as you scratch the surface you see that this is a just continuation of their policy of handouts for developers and landlords - and consquently a continuation of the housing crisis for the working class.

While the target for new homes has increased to 300,000 by 2030 there are no substantial changes in how these will be delivered. The reliance on the private market continues with a target of only 12,000 new social homes a year. That’s only 72,000 social housing units when there’s already more than 147,000 in need of social housing between those on council housing lists and on HAP and RAS.

There is no plan to house all those people who need homes. The 12,000 doesn’t even represent much of an increase when compared to their pathetic delivery of 11,900 in 2023 and 10,600 in 2024. That’s they’ve scrapped yearly targets - they know they’ll just miss them again and again.

In the new plan the government boasts about their previous plan “Housing For All” and the 137,000 new homes built since 2021. However, if you compare these figures to previous years they’re well below the high point of home building during the Celtic Tiger with almost 90,000 new homes built in 2007 alone.

There is a recognition that housing is a EU wide problem. But they can’t talk about why this is happening, which is because of the privatisation of housing all across Europe. The plan intends to simply continue this neoliberal approach. They say that “Delivering Homes, Building Communities presents a renewed environment for private sector investment and development to deliver more homes.”

Part of this pandering to developers is a further reduction in apartment standards, which come on top of those that have already been introduced, and the changes in rent levels where rents can now be increased to completely unaffordable market levels for new tenancies.

There is more money for developers through a VAT reduction on apartments and further corporation tax reductions, both of which were already introduced in the 2026 Budget.

The re-zoning of more land for housing had already been started by local councils. This could become a cash cow for land owners who hoard land. They say that they will be “enforcing the Residential Zoned Land Tax; and strengthening the use of Compulsory Purchase Orders” but no details are included of how this will be done.

Land re-zoning has been more about enabling the profiteering of developers than providing housing. Those who have hoarded land will now line up to make a killing.

There’s increased funding of €2.5 billion to the Land Development Agency to continue “working in partnership to deliver more homes across all tenures, including social and private; backing more Small and Medium Enterprise housing developers”. More public money being spent on developers to build private houses!

Also, we’ve already heard how the government is intending to privatise the development of new standalone wastewater treatment plants to bolster the service provided by Uisce Éireann.

They’re also talking about reviewing the development contribution process. This is about the fees charged by local councils to developers for the provision of parks, community and other local services. It says it “will consider the impact of contributions on the viability of housing projects.”

That’s code for another giveaway to developers with a loss of public services and amenities for ordinary people.

In terms of lifelines for those facing eviction such as the tenant in situ scheme it’s non-existent in this plan. Government has already cut funding for the scheme. There’s no ban on evictions and there’s only one sentence that says:

“In respect of tenancy sustainment the acquisitions programme will continue to act as a necessary last resort policy tool available to local authorities to help prevent individuals or families falling into homelessness.”

There is no figure in relation to the amount of funding available for this. In the last year most councils ran out of funding, as the government discouraged use of the scheme, leaving tenants with no options but emergency accommodation and homelessness.

Instead the government have: “dedicated funding to fund second-hand acquisitions of homes to exit families who have been in emergency accommodation the longest. Funding of €100m will be allocated in 2026 to support this work”.

Surely it makes more sense to buy these homes before families are evicted.

In terms of dereliction and vacant properties there is very little change to policy. There’ll be a new Derelict Property Tax administered by Revenue (currently it’s a levy in the hands of the councils).

But this is self assessed and won’t be implemented until 2027. There is no change in policy of actually bringing vacant homes into use. There’s no substantial penalties for owners that leave homes vacant for years, and no additional powers for councils to take these properties.

To actually deliver the number of public homes required would take a complete change in policy. A state owned construction company run by workers could deliver hundreds of thousands of homes for the working class.

The plan talks about using MMC (essentially modular construction methods) but this could only be rolled out in an efficient way if it was done directly by the state and under the management of workers. It should also be noted that while the plan mentions increased apprentice numbers and an “Action Plan for Apprenticeships” there is no mention of the trade unions and their role or what actions they would have to take to implement this.

For existing council and social housing tenants this plan is disastrous. There’s a retrofit programme for council houses but only for 36,500 homes across the whole country. This is the same figure that was in the old plan, but the actual roll-out has been very slow. Considering that there’s 10,000 council homes in South Dublin alone with many of them needing retrofitting this target is tiny.

Most importantly the plan says that: “Government will undertake a comprehensive review of the differential rents system in local authorities.”

This means a continuation of rent increases that have already started all across the country. This is an attack on the most vulnerable people and will condemn thousands of children to poverty. This is part of a long term strategy of getting rid of social housing altogether.

The plan mentions the Housing Commission’s “Recommendation 45b - Merging social and cost rental housing over time to form a single affordable rental sector, based on the principle of cost recovery that will accommodate both low income households and some middle income groups”.

This is a plan to get rid of social housing by merging it into the cost rental model. When they talk about “cost recovery” they’re talking about ending subsidized housing for everyone on low incomes.

Public housing where rents are charged based on the income of the tenant is the solution to the housing crisis. This plan is doing the opposite and signalling the end of this system of public housing. We must organise to fight back against this!

Tenants of Dublin City Council are already planning a protest outside City Hall on December 1st as a starting point for a big movement.

This “new” housing plan is based on the same old principle of relying on the private market to deliver housing. And behind the numbers and statistics the real agenda is to undermine and eventually get rid of social housing altogether.

As long as we live in a capitalist society all housing plans will fail to deliver for the working class. The rich can simply hoard land and homes and drive up prices and rents. They can withdraw investment and withhold construction to force governments to do what they want and Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are only too happy to play along.

If workers were in the driving seat of a socialist, planned economy we could have a housing plan that delivered homes for all, decent pay and conditions for construction workers and provide all the accompanying infrastructure and services. We would put the country on a war footing to end the housing crisis by mobilising every resource possible and coordinating a national housing plan.

But it would take a people power rebellion to get there. Let’s start by supporting council tenants protesting outside Dublin City Council on December the 1st at 6pm.