For much of the 20th century, council housing was the backbone of housing supply in Ireland. My own house was completed in 1930 by well-known builders Crampton. This was a year when the country was economically indigent, life expectancy was less than 60 years, Guinness and Ford were our largest employers, and just five years had passed since “Ireland’s forgotten famine” – the grim winter of 1925 when as many as 750,000 people were reported to be starving.
Yet even in those harsh times councils built 5,000 new houses out of a total of 17,906 for a population of just under 3 million. In the 1930s, social housing accounted for 54.8 per cent of total housing output. In 2024, councils built 1,708 new houses for a population of 5.3 million. Since mid-2016, the start of Simon Coveney’s Rebuilding Ireland plan, councils have built 10,480 new houses, or 5.5 per cent of all new housing output.
An additional 32,000 social houses have been delivered by councils purchasing 7,464 new houses (those already built or about to be built) – which are known as turnkeys – and by approved housing bodies (AHBs) building some and purchasing more than 20,000 turnkeys.
Politicians point to the use of turnkeys as important sources of new social housing, and they are somewhat correct. However, the use of turnkeys is expensive, inflationary, market-dependent and any housing delivered by AHBs is not owned by the State and could potentially be sold at a later date. Turnkeys are increasingly being bought from developers who have planning permission to build apartments, but no market to sell them to. And so a symbiotic relationship has emerged between them and the State: the State needs social housing, and the developers need bailing out. The State has become the market. Policies such as tenure mix – a lesson from Ballymun, where new developments should have a mix of ownership and rental – have been abandoned in the interests of quantity over quality.
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In 2024, councils bought 1,269 turnkeys from developers, and AHBs bought 3,567 turnkeys and built 335 new social houses, a ratio of 11 to one. One council built no new housing in 2024, and AHBs built nothing in 19 out of 31 council areas. The use of turnkey purchases has increased steadily over the years, and the proportion of directly built new council housing has declined.
Many councils are meeting their targets by buying more houses, particularly in areas where housing is expensive, while also sitting on large land banks.
Last year, the four Dublin councils and AHBs combined managed a total of 2,267 new houses, comprising a mix of new builds (514) and turnkey purchases (1,753). Within those 514 new builds are just 342 social houses built by councils, just over half what they built in 2018. The combined social housing waiting list in these authorities is 24,575 households or 41 per cent of the national total of 59,941.
The total of all new social housing nationally was 7,518 in 2024, which includes hundreds of Part Vs, which are purchases of new houses developers are obliged to build for councils. Removing this, the total figure is 6,879, of which the local authority new build contribution was up 29 per cent on 2023. This increase is positive, but still only similar to council output in 2022.
Seven councils built 10 houses or fewer. Four councils – Limerick, Meath, South Dublin and Cork City – built more than 100 new houses. Monaghan, the council that failed to build one new house, has 330 households on its social housing waiting list. Most councillors don’t know what their own councils have built.
[ State missed its target for delivery of social homes in 2024 by almost 20%Opens in new window ]
Councils building housing is critical. It is the only delivery stream that we can control and it remains part of the State’s social housing stock. It also delivers better value: urban councils built a three-bed house in 2024 for as little as €264,000, and a two-bed apartment for €290,000, including all costs and land where applicable, and even less in rural areas.
Given Ireland’s precarious economic strategy of relying on a handful of companies for the bulk of its tax income, if (or when) State funds dry up, the capacity to purchase turnkey housing – the primary source of new social housing – will also dry up.
It is questionable having organs of the State fixing the poor financial decisions of developers and sometimes competing against potential homebuyers keen to make a start in life. It is no wonder our home ownership rate (66 per cent) has fallen below the European average (69.2 per cent), which has its own serious implications.
To be strategic, to prepare for a tougher economic climate, to provide a countercyclical stream of work for the construction industry and to get better value for taxpayers’ money, the State needs to substantially increase the amount of housing that councils directly build each year, until they are completing 10,000 annually on top of any other sources.
Councils need approval from the Department of Housing for any proposed housing under a single-stage process for developments less than €8 million, and a four-stage process for anything above that. The target for single-stage approval is four weeks less than the 59 weeks given for the four-stage. Only then does building begin. This back-and-forth between councils and the department drives many councils to buy more turnkeys and it’s not hard to see why: it is simply less hassle.
When councils delivered housing at scale they were allowed to borrow money and had a large degree of autonomy. Councils should now be handed annual output targets based on a proportion of their social housing waiting list, or a 30 per cent cumulative increase on their highest-ever annual output. The Department of Housing should not be involved in site-specific pre-approval, but should audit costs post-completion.
Resources, authority and the responsibility for delivery should be returned to councils, which generally do good work when they are given the leeway. An outsourcing of our housing delivery responsibilities and commensurate reliance on the market has got us to where we are today. Common sense dictates it is time to take ownership of the issue and return to the basics of council building.
Dr Lorcan Sirr is senior lecturer in housing at the Technological University Dublin
