Housing chief says Dublin City Council must start directly building more homes
The latest figures on the delivery of local authority housing make for grim reading across many areas of the country.
Despite the ongoing housing crisis in the capital, Dublin City Council (DCC) – the country’s largest local authority – built only 49pc of the social homes it should have between 2022 and 2024.
This earned it the position of second-worst on the national leaderboard, well behind the three other local authorities in Dublin and second only to Donegal (46pc) in terms of missing targets.
While the overall number of 2,344 was the greatest number of social housing units delivered by a single authority, it fell far short of its 4,800 target.
Broken down by year, 613 homes were built by DCC in 2022; 759 in 2023; and 969 in 2024, well short of the respective targets set by the Department of Housing.
By comparison, South Dublin County Council and Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown both delivered on or above their targets between 2022 and 2024, while Fingal hit 67pc.
Mick Mulhern, assistant chief executive in charge of housing at Dublin City Council, is keen to explain why those targets were missed.
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“You have to acknowledge that for about eight or nine years [during the recession], there was very, very little, if any, local authority housing being built,” he said.
The way he sees it, a housing crisis “starting gun” went off in government in 2016, which took several years to filter down to local authorities in the form of funding and projects.
“I would say 2018, 2019 is when DCC and most of the local authorities really started to ramp up and think about actual meaningful delivery on the ground,” Mr Mulhern said.
Between procurement, planning, selecting a contractor and construction, he said housing schemes can take between five and seven years to complete.
However, he points out that building in the DCC area often presents additional challenges.
“A 100-unit housing scheme on a greenfield [site] in Cork, that’s an easier process to go through,” he said. “Whereas a lot of the housing schemes we work on in Dublin City Council, they’re brownfield sites where there might be existing flat complexes or communities.
There’s a difference between, say, diverting a gas main through a site and providing a new one into that site
“For example, on several of our sites, we’ve got to go and engage with ESB to get energy networks put in and water infrastructure diverted.
“There’s a difference between, say, diverting a gas main through a site and providing a new one into that site.”
Notwithstanding the poor performance against social housing targets in recent years, Mr Mulhern said there is now a “really strong” pipeline of housing schemes out to 2029.
He said there were about 100 projects currently under way on council-owned land that would deliver 11,500 homes over the next eight years.
Of those, a third are on site, another third are planning approved, and the final third are in the pre-planning stage.
“In 2024, there was about 1,000 social homes built and about 500 affordable purchase and cost-rental builds,” Mr Mulhern said.
“In 2025, we’ll see that combined figure exceed 2,000, by DCC and Approved Housing Bodies (AHBs).
“In 2026, that figure will be almost 3,000, and in 2027, that figure will exceed 4,000.”
On top of this, AHBs have discussed with DCC building another 3,500 homes in the city over the next three years, with more to follow down the line.
Given the scale of the current housing crisis, many have claimed we should return to a time when far more homes were being directly built by local authorities.
Between 2022 and 2024, just 35pc of the affordable and social homes delivered in Dublin city were directly built by DCC.
“That’s not enough,” Mr Mulhern said, adding that the council’s goal was to increase this share.
Not-for-profit organisations – such as Clúid, Tuath and Respond – accounted for 45pc of social and affordable new builds, while Part V homes, when the state buys a portion of a private developer’s scheme, made up 20pc.
Mr Mulhern also said decisions at government level could affect the delivery pipeline for new homes.
He pointed to the recent intervention by Housing Minister James Browne, pausing the latest Public Private Partnership (PPP) bundle of homes on value-for-money grounds.
He said this would “absolutely” delay three DCC projects – in Ballymun, East Wall Road and Whitehall – representing around 250 homes for the capital.
Our 11,500 [homes] on DCC land is an incredibly credible figure
“Those homes were due to start on site in July. They should be on site today,” he said. “It’ll be less than a year, but there will be a delay.
“Bundle four will equally have a delay, but because it wasn’t at the point of making a decision and getting a contract, it’ll be sizeably less [than bundle three].”
Another thorn in the side of DCC is the city’s longstanding issue of dereliction.
The authority’s derelict sites register continues to grow, with campaigners saying this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to urban decay.
A few months ago, DCC controversially opted to move staff from its Adaptive Reuse programme, which aimed to turn vacant commercial and office space into homes, onto projects which would deliver more housing more quickly.
Despite criticism of the move from some councillors, Mr Mulhern insisted the work of injecting vibrancy into Dublin’s streets continues under a different guise.
“The city council is over 1,000 years old, so we have a huge amount of assets across the whole council which are underused,” he said.
“What we need to do is take a holistic approach to how we deal with all of those assets.”
He points to a council working group on vacancy and dereliction – led by councillor Cian Farrell and due to report next month – as the next step in a comprehensive strategy.
“We’re not stopping Adaptive Reuse … it’s a slight refocus of the objective around: how do we create a really vibrant city which provides affordable workspace, affordable living and all of that,” he said.
“We’re in a full employment market. Every local authority in the country has now done what they call a strategic workforce plan review.”
This document sets out the skill and staff shortages facing the council over the next five years. In DCC’s case, it has specifically asked for more housing maintenance and delivery personnel.
Mr Mulhern said the council currently spends between €75m and €80m a year fixing up housing, but this “wasn’t enough”.
“You could give me any amount of money, and we would spend it over the next five years,” he said, adding that the city’s many old and crumbling apartment complexes were particularly difficult to upgrade.
Despite all the challenges, DCC’s housing chief remains optimistic about delivering the upcoming slate of projects as quickly as the layers of bureaucracy allow.
“It’s not just another plan,” Mr Mulhern said. “Our 11,500 [homes] on DCC land is an incredibly credible figure.”