It “doesn’t look too likely” the Government will hit its target of 41,000 new homes this year, a housing expert has predicted. 

In the Programme for Government, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael promised to build “more than 300,000 new homes by the end of 2030”. 

Ahead of the election in November, the Department of Housing said 41,000 homes would have to be built this year if the 300,000 target is to be met. 

Since then, the Department has revealed that only 30,330 new homes were built last year - fewer than the 32,525 completed in 2023. 

On Newstalk Breakfast, Karl Deeter of Irish Mortgage Brokers said the decline in house building means the Government will struggle to meet its targets. 

“It doesn’t look too likely,” he said. 

“We’ve seen a big falloff in apartment output, which is going to be one of the key things that we need to do. 

“Getting that right is going to be difficult given we’re kind of done a lot on the policy side to make sure that the people who have been delivering apartments, stop delivering apartments. 

“In the last two, three months alone, we’ve seen 2,500 housing units have their planning permission revoked through either An Bord Pleanála or the courts.” 

A construction worker at a site on George's Street Dublin. Picture by: Sasko Lazarov/RollingNews

Mr Deeter added that while Ireland’s housing market is routinely referred to as a ‘crisis’, the Government is not treating it as such. 

“When we had a financial crisis we could always do emergency legislation in a day,” he said. 

“We had a COVID crisis, you could do everything in a very short amount of time - even evolving the planning because we had to build all these special places for testing and everything else.

“[They] even took away people’s basic liberties overnight.” 

Mr Deeter continued that there is no “big bang” solution to the housing crisis; instead, he urged the Government to deregulate and let local communities tackle the problem. 

“Do you ever see those jokes, ‘Would you rather fight 20,000 hornets or a rottweiler?’ 20,000 hornets will win every time,” he said. 

“Mass micro output is actually a large part of the solution and that means allowing rural Ireland and people who own land to say… ‘If you’ve got half an acre and road frontage, you can drill your own well and do your own drainage - for the next two-year you can get planning permission and follow the building regulations.’

“One off housing is an important part of delivery.” 

File photo of houses for sale. Picture by: Sam Boal / RollingNews.ie

Mr Deeter also said the Government should abolish rent pressure zones, which ban landlords from increasing their tenants’ rent by more than 2% a year. 

“Rent caps have worked in terms of reducing housing supply and reducing rental stock,” he said. 

“They have worked perfectly in terms of what we knew they would do. 

“For that very reason, we have to get rid of them but it’s going to be a tricky transition.” 

Advocates of rent caps argue that they stop landlords from exploiting their tenants by increasing rents above the rate of inflation or wages.

Main image: Builders at work. Picture by: Eamonn Farrell/RollingNews.ie. 11/01/2022