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LAST UPDATE | 1 Jul
HOUSING MINISTER JAMES Browne will seek Cabinet approval today to begin publishing league tables of local authority housing delivery.
Browne will this morning ask his government colleagues to sign-off on plans that would see the Department of Housing begin to publish a list of the best and worst performing Councils across the country in terms of social housing.
Specifically, the data will focus on each local authority’s delivery of new-build social housing as set against the targets in the government’s Housing for All plan.
While league tables have not yet been formally published, figures seen by The Journal already reveal wide disparities in performance over recent years.
Between 2022 and 2024, just 14 local authorities met or exceeded their cumulative social housing targets set under the Housing for All plan, while 17 fell short.
Laois County Council delivered the highest proportion of its target, completing 670 homes – 87% above its assigned goal of 359.
Next was Meath, where 1,405 homes were built during the same three-year period. They exceeded their target delivery by 573 homes.
At the bottom of the list is Donegal, where only 46% of the 534 target homes were built since 2022. The local authority missed its targets each year, delivering just over 80 homes annually.
Dublin City Council ranked marginally higher, delivering 2,344 (49%) of the pledged 4,800 homes between 2022 and 2024.
These figures are expected to form the basis of regular public updates if Cabinet approves the minister’s proposal today.
It’s understood that the rationale behind publishing this data is to increase transparency and accountability.
Last year, the government missed its social housing targets by about 18%, or 2,345 homes.
When these figures were published by the government in April of this year it prompted the Housing Minister to call on local authorities to “do everything possible” to meet their targets this year.
In 2024, there was a 1.9% year-on-year increase in demand for social housing, equating to 1,117 homes.
As of November 2024, 59,941 households were assessed as being qualified for and in need of social housing support.
Statistics made public earlier this month revealed that Dublin City topped the list as the local authority with the largest number of empty State-owned dwellings.
Some 750 local authority properties were registered as unused across the capital’s four county councils, 265 of which have been vacant for up to a year.
Cork comes in second place with 495 total derelict council houses across the county, followed by Limerick with 220 such houses, while Kildare accounts for 129, according to the data.
The Journal reported in March that the majority of the country’s county councils failed to collect money from other owners of derelict sites, as figures suggested that councils are owed more than €20 million in unpaid levies.
In an effort to speed up the delivery of social housing across the country, Minister Browne will today also seek approval to reduce the bureaucracy around launching new social homes.
The Housing Minister is seeking to standardise house types and their specifications as well as introduce “efficiencies” in pre-construction approval stages.
This will be done through the Department of Housing mandating the use of specific design layouts and specifications.
In addition to this, what is often referred to as the four-stage process of approving new social homes will be reduced to a single step, The Journal understands.
It is expected that these new ways of working will be operational within the next three months.
Meanwhile, the minister will also ask the government to approve the text of the Planning and Development (Amendment) Bill 2025, which will give people, under certain circumstances, an extension of up to three years of their planning permission when facing a judicial review.
With reporting from Andrew Walsh
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