31,000 waiting for homes in Dublin as 'not fit for purpose' department blasted
New figures show a total of 31,470 applicants are currently on Dublin City Council housing waiting lists, underling the scale of the housing crisis.
Councillor Dermot Lacey, who obtained this figure through a question at the Council’s October Monthly meeting, said the data highlights how Ireland is being held back by excessive bureaucracy. The Department of Housing is “not fit for purpose” and has spent the past 40 years “undermining local government,” Cllr Lacey said.
Having recently outlined his views in a speech as Committee of the Regions member in the European Parliament in Brussels, Cllr Lacey said it's now time for a total “mindset change.” With a housing service that he claims is blocking real progress by centralising control and stifling local authorities, Cllr Lacey said when there was a stronger local government system in Ireland it was far easier to deliver housing.
Cllr Lacey argued the Government is in “breach of one of the key principles of the European Union" - the subsidiarity principle, which states that decisions should be made at the lowest possible level.
“I don’t believe that the housing crisis is irresolvable, but I do believe it's irresolvable under our current governance arrangements,” Cllr Lacey said. Without any shortages of money or land, Cllr Lacey stressed the problem lies in excessive governmental control and a lack of imagination at national level.
“Every motivation in Customs House is to exercise control rather than deliver,” he said. “The civil service believes it has to control everything, from whether a window sill moves six inches to left or right,” he said. This only further delays projects and means that housing developments take far longer than they should, he added.
In attempting to gather information for his Committee of the Regions member in the European Parliament speech, Cllr Lacey requested that some basic housing facts be revealed.
These included the number of the applicants currently on housing waiting lists, which amount to 14,544 on the Housing List, 16,926 on the Transfer List, with a combined total of 31,470. The number of properties owned by the Council was also revealed as 29,400.
As of August 31, 2025, there are 8,962 approved housing body owned units in the Dublin City Council Area. These properties become available to the Council for nomination as vacancies arise.
In 2024, 969 new housing units were opened by the Council. These include: 130 homes via Part V, 256 homes via DCC delivery, turnkey and buy & renew. As well as 583 homes via AHB social housing.
For homes likely to be made available in 2025, the AHB sector is on target to deliver 1,400 social housing units during 2025 in the Dublin City Council Area. This includes CALF and CAS construction and turnkey projects and AHB acquisitions for homeless exits.
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