A Department of Finance update on housing reviewed by then-minister Jack Chambers only weeks before the last general election stated housing completions for 2024 would be closer to 30,000 than the 40,000 claimed by Government candidates throughout the campaign.
Sinn Féin has claimed that Mr Chambers was aware of this assessment of housing completions and had “buried it” during the election campaign. It also accused him of misleading the Irish public.
That claim, however, has been strongly rejected by Mr Chambers, who said the assessment was based on knowledge that was publicly available, including CSO data, and did not include anything that was new.
“This information was not new,” a spokesman for Mr Chambers said on Thursday. “The CSO data had been published two weeks earlier and was debated in the Dáil on the day of publication. The Minister was already aware of these inputs from the CSO and the Central Bank.”
The internal monthly update on housing was written on November 4th, 2024. It stated that new completions in Quarter 3 (July to September) were 6 per cent higher than the number of homes completed in the same quarter the previous year. It also stated it was the first growth recorded on an annual basis in any quarter in 2024.
It then stated: “The figures-to-date are broadly in line with recent revisions to completion forecasts from the Central Bank for 2024, which point to housing output similar to, or slightly lower, than last year.”
A copy of the document, produced by the Department’s Budget and Economics Division, was sent for review to-then minister for finance Jack Chambers on November 6th.
Sinn Féin has claimed that despite the document being submitted to him, Mr Chambers and his Government colleagues persisted in insisting up to polling day on November 29th that completions in 2024 would be close to 40,000.
Pearse Doherty, the party’s finance spokesman, claimed on Thursday that Mr Chambers “buried” the information and had deliberately misled the public on this matter.
The records were released to Mr Doherty under a Freedom of Information request.
The document was submitted to review by the Minister on November 6th. The schedule of dates suggested that this review was completed.
Mr Doherty said it was not merely an official repeating the Central Bank forecast or housing completions (of which the Government was aware) but making an assessment that the up-to-date figures in November were broadly in line with that assessment that completion figures could be lower than those for 2023.
Speaking to the media on Thursday, Mr Doherty that Mr Chambers had insisted in a broadcast debate some days later that the Government was still on a pathway to build 40,000 homes. He called on Mr Chambers to clarify why he had not made the assessment known during the election campaign.
“Jack Chambers now needs to be clear. Why did he deliberately mislead the Irish public? Why did he bury a report that he had from his department, which said that the reduction was that they would deliver the same, if not less, houses than the previous years?
“Why did he continue to claim figures of 40,000 or the high 30,000s?”
However, a spokesman for Mr Chambers said that he rejected the assertions made by Mr Doherty.
“There were many different bodies and agencies giving varied projections on housing numbers at the time which were in the public domain.”
The total number of homes completed in 2024 was 30,300, 7 per cent lower than the figures for 2023.
Mr Chambers, now the Minister for Public Expenditure, is in Chile and Argentina this week as part of the Government’s St Patrick’s Day programme.
