In early November 2024, amid Cabinet agreement to progress and publish the draft schedule of amendments to the First Revision of the National Planning Framework (NPF), the previous government approved revised housing targets for 2025-2030 with an overall target of 303,000 new homes across the State.
Addressing the Joint Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage on 5 November 2024, Assistant Secretary, Planning Division, Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Paul Hogan, provided an update on the draft First Revision of the NPF following his last committee appearance in July 2024.
The public consultation, which closed in mid-September 2024, attracted a total of 272 submissions. Thematically, these dealt with:
- balanced regional development;
- regional cities;
- population and housing targets;
- zoned land requirements;
- infrastructure delivery;
- compact growth; and
- climate and the environment.
Earlier that day, Cabinet agreed to publish the draft schedule of amendments within an updated draft document, subject to finalisation following environmental assessment.
In his assessment, Hogan asserted: “Given likely events [general election 2024], it will be for an incoming government to finally determine the NPF, assuming it is in accordance with the legislation under which the process commenced, the 2000 Act.
“That requires the Government to decide to finalise the document with the full environmental assessments completed and to then bring the document to the Oireachtas.”
Housing
On the same day, ahead of general election 2024, the Government’s decision to publish an updated housing target offered some clarity on housing policy for the time to the end of 2030, setting a target aligned with population and employment growth which has exceeded the 2018 NPF projections.
Averaging over 50,500 homes per annum, and outlining a pathway to deliver 60,000 in 2030 and subsequent years, the then-Government described it as a crucial step towards meeting:
1. growing housing need, as per population increases; and
2. existing and ongoing demand for housing.
The overall target is intended to be met via incremental increases from 41,000 units in 2025 to 60,000 by the end of 2030. The overall target is a total of 77,300 more homes than was original intended for the same period.
Speaking in November 2024, then-Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien TD emphasised the “detailed ESRI modelling” of population growth and housing demand into the future. “The NPF provides a framework by which we as a country can grow and sustain ourselves. I was delighted to get Cabinet agreement today to progress it to the next step.
“I was also very pleased to get Cabinet agreement for our new housing targets which will see us deliver an annual average of 50,500 homes per year, building up to 60,000 in 2030. We’ve always said that we would review the housing targets in light of Census 2022 and that the approach we would take would be evidence based,” he said.
The former Minister was keen to emphasise that the new targets were not a cap, rather they were the “floor” of ambition.
The incoming Government is required to approve a final First Revision to the National Planning Framework after the completion of a Strategic Environmental Assessment; a Natura Impact Statement; an Appropriate Assessment Determination; and a Strategic Flood Risk Assessment.
Ultimate approval rests with the Oireachtas, and if and when it is finalised, the revised NPF will be implemented across the regional spatial and economic strategies and the city and county development plans, including through updated housing supply targets.
Offering some clarification when speaking to the Oireachtas housing committee, Hogan made a distinction between the decision to publish a housing delivery target of 303,000 units for the first period of the national target – to 2030 – and the NPF framework which is “based on an annual average over the full period to 2040”.
In response, Sinn Féin housing spokesperson Eoin Ó Broin TD remarked: “Obviously, I understand the difference between setting a macro target to 2040 and then what an individual government does with regard to how it meets those targets within a five-year cycle.”
If and when a target of 60,000 new homes is achieved in 2030, the gap between unmet demand and the national delivery target will, according to Hogan, necessitate “maintaining at least 60,000 units for most of the decade”. This produces an average delivery of around 54,000 to 2040, a figure upon which the NOF is based.
Then-committee cathaoirleach, Steven Matthews, emphasised variables such the economy, interest rates, skills capacity, and household sizes as reason to avoid “fixate[ing] on just one figure”.
In a statement released that same day, Ó Broin asserted: “After much delay and some petty politicking between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, the government has finally published their long promised revised housing targets. Unfortunately, these targets fall far short of what is needed to tackle the housing crisis…
“These targets are 20 per cent below what the Government’s own Housing Commission recommended earlier this year [2024].
“That report, drafted by people involved in the delivery of public and private housing on a daily basis, said that a minimum of 300,000 new homes would be required from 2025 to 2029, with an annual average of 60,000. They also recommended that at least 70,000 new homes would be needed in 2030,” Ó Broin continued.
Unmet demand
Meanwhile, the Social Democrats’ spokesperson for housing, Cian O’Callaghan TD insisted: “Today’s revised targets are an acknowledgement of huge unmet housing need. However, the reality is that people cannot live in a target… Coming up with new targets on the way out the door, without a plan to achieve them, is nothing more than a cynical election ploy.”
With the target set, the housing sector has been provided with some clarity, yet it is widely acknowledged – including by figures such as Ivan Gaine, Managing Director of Sherry FitzGerald New Homes and Commercial and Michael O’Flynn, CEO of the O’Flynn Group, as well as opposition politicians – that the top figure of 303,000 is still too low to meet unmet demand.
Indeed, the Report of The Housing Commission determined that a minimum of 300,000 homes would be required by the beginning of 2030, with 70,000 required in 2030.
Meanwhile, the Department of Finance’s Funds Sector 2030: A Framework for Open, Resilient and Developing Markets report, published in October 2024, outlines that “Ireland does not have a sufficiently large permanent pool of domestic capital to draw upon for property development and investment”.
Instead, it determines, that around €20 billion of equity and debt would be required to deliver 50,000 homes per annum, three-quarters of which “would have to come from private capital, the vast majority of which will be from international funders”. In the six-year period from the beginning of 2025 to the end of 2030, this would equate to over €100 billion in capital.
In this context, and ahead of government formation, the housing sector eagerly anticipates the incoming government’s housing policy priorities as per the programme for government.
