In a statement today People Before Profit TD, Richard Boyd Barrett, said that the Dún Laoghaire Rathdown Housing Delivery Action Plan 2022-2026, is hopelessly inadequate and will not even provide homes for those who are currently on the council lists.
The Plan was received by Cllr Melisa Halpin at the monthly council meeting on Monday 13 June but has not yet been discussed by the councillors.
The plan commits to 2318 new council houses over the next 5 years. There are currently 2458 on the waiting list in DLR, not including those on HAP and RAS transfer lists, and the council estimates that nearly 7000 will join the list between now and 2026.
For those looking for Affordable homes, the projections are equally bleak with only 1549 cost rental or affordable purchase coming on stream over the next 5 years.
Deputy Boyd Barrett said: “This plan is shockingly and hopelessly inadequate! With plans for only 2318 new social homes and 1549 affordable to buy or to rent homes between now and 2026, it is clear that the current housing disaster will be a housing tragedy by the end of the plan.
“What makes matters worse is that the estimates of numbers of those in need of housing, takes no account of those who are in HAP or RAS tenancies, with no acknowledgement that these tenancies are not secure and permanent and many of these people will still be looking for such a home at the end of this action plan.
“Yesterday, Michael D Higgins said that a key problem with the government housing policy was relying on the market and the speculators to provide homes for those in need, yet the new figures from the Council show more of the same with only a quarter of the 2318 homes being actually built by the Council on their own land.
“Since I came into the Dáil over a decade ago we have had 3 different housing plans. The FG/Lab government’s Housing 2020, Fine Gael’s Rebuilding Ireland and now Fianna Fáil’s Housing for All. It’s all just smoke and mirrors, the reality is that all the plans are different versions of the same policy and they fundamentally all rely on the private sector to deliver the homes that people need – this has failed for the last decade and will continue to fail. We need a different policy, we need the state to build the houses directly which would be cheaper and would actually start to house the people in homeless services and on the list.”
