This afternoon, the Department of Housing reported that 16,734 people were in emergency homeless accommodation in December. Over 5,000 children were among those in emergency accommodation.
Richard Boyd Barrett said this is to the eternal shame of the Government. Deputy Boyd Barrett also said that the Government’s Residential Tenancies Bill will enable landlords to turbo charge rent increases.
He also highlighted that 2025 housing completions were far below what the Central Bank says we need, while construction work has not begun on over 30,000 sites that have had planning permission for housing for up to 4 years.
Deputy Boyd Barrett repeated calls for a no-fault eviction ban, for meaningful rent controls, and for the establishment of a transformational state construction company, rapidly scaled up with land, finance and labour to end the housing crisis.
People Before Profit’s Richard Boyd Barrett said “This afternoon we learned that 16,734 people were living in emergency homeless accommodation in December. Within that shocking figure, we know that over 5,000 children spent their Christmas in emergency accommodation. This is a policy failure that is to the Government’s eternal shame.
“Half of the children in homeless accommodation were there for their second Christmas in a row. One in four are in homeless accommodation for their third or fourth Christmas in emergency homeless accommodation. This is an experience that will affect those children for their entire lives.
“We also know that a third of those in emergency accommodation are there because they were evicted from their private rental homes. The fact is that they would not be homeless if the Government had not lifted the ban on no-fault evictions.
“Rents in Ireland are already amongst the highest in Europe. Rents in Dublin average €2,500 per month, with many parts of Dublin above €3,000 per month. Yet next week the Government plans to bring forward the Residential Tenancies Bill that will remove controls on rent that we have had and instead allow the market to dictate rents. Inevitably this will turbo charge rent increases.
“Data released yesterday by the Central Statistics Office showed that about 36,000 new homes were completed in 2025, but the Central Bank has said we need between 50,000 and 60,000 new homes per year for the Government to meet its own 2030 housing plan target. There isn’t a hope in hell they’ll meet that target and there’s no end in sight to the housing crisis.
“We also learned this week that planning permissions for 32,000 homes are being hoarded by developers. There are no objections preventing the building of new homes on these sites, but the developers have left them without a sod turned for up to 4 years because they are waiting until they can make even more profit from building homes. Meanwhile, the urgent housing needs of tens of thousands of people go unmet.
The Minister, when he launched his new housing policy last month said that housing
‘is about international markets, it's actually a spreadsheet in Zurich or New York or Antwerp more so than a builder looking at a site in Longford or Roscommon that’s actually deciding what's happening here’.
The Minister’s own words show that it’s profit-hungry investors that decide what housing will be provided here. The Government simply pours more and more public money at developers in the vain hope that it will somehow result in more new homes. This market policy has failed over and over again and it will continue to fail.
“Unaffordable rent is about to become even more unaffordable, and we have record house prices that are out of reach for most. At the same time developers hoard tens of thousands of sites while they wait for the government to make it even more profitable for them to build homes.
“The housing crisis needs emergency actions. The Government must reinstate the no-fault eviction ban immediately to prevent any more people being evicted into homelessness through no fault of their own, and it must introduce meaningful rent controls that reduce rents to affordable levels.
“Beyond these emergency actions, the transformational change that’s needed to solve the housing crisis is the establishment of a state construction company that is ramped up rapidly with the land, the finance and the labour required to build the infrastructure and the tens of thousands of public and affordable homes we urgently need.
“We cannot tolerate more wasted years of market failures that enrich developers and impoverish everyone else. A massive state-led house build programme is needed immediately”.