Boyd Barrett slams Government’s failure ‘of epic proportions’

Dun Laoghaire TD Richard Boyd Barrett has strongly criticised the Department of Housing after releasing the latest figures showing the number of homes delivered by local authorities in 2022.

According to the data, councils around the country delivered 2885 homes, with 546 coming from the four Dublin local authorities.

Only two of these homes were developed by Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council.

“It is just shocking that in the year when the housing crisis moved to a disaster and then a catastrophe, and when the government claimed month after month that they were delivering record levels of social housing, it now turns out that the output of local authority homes is only 2885,” Deputy Boyd Barrett said.

“In the four Dublin local authorities, where the housing crisis is at its most severe, only 546 new council homes were delivered.

“In my area, Dún Laoghaire Rathdown, where there are over 5000 households on the various housing waiting lists, we see an utterly shocking figure of only two new council houses built.

“This is a shameful failure of truly epic proportions.

“Even when the numbers of social homes delivered by Approved Housing Bodies (AHBs) and the Part V process are included, the grand total of homes delivered in the county is only 209.”

Responding to Deputy Boyd-Barrett in the Dail last week, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said that “there is more to the State than the local authorities and councils.

“Even if we go back to the 1950s or the 1960s, the State used housing trusts and approved housing bodies to help to build social and public housing, for example the Iveagh Trust and many other schemes.

“There is nothing new about that.”

However, Deputy Boyd Barrett said that “behind all the recent rhetoric of the government claiming that social housing delivery had dramatically ramped up in the second half of 2022, this is the stark reality of a shameful government failure to actually increase the output of state provided social housing in any significant way.”

Deputy Boyd Barrett said the “shocking figures expose even further the real context” in which the Government took the decision to lift the eviction ban.”

“These figures confirm why the government must immediately reinstate the eviction ban and why, in addition, they must now introduce the sorts of radical measures People Before Profit have long been calling for.”

These include the establishment of a state construction company, “meaningful rent controls, ‘use it or lose it’ provisions on vacant property, and a dramatic increase of the Part V social and affordable requirement on new developments from the current 20 percent to at least 50 percent.”