The Joint Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage has debated the Housing Commission report, published in May 2024. 

The 150-page report contained six key recommendations on how to meet Ireland’s housing requirements, including that the country’s housing deficit should be addressed through emergency action and ensuring that 20 per cent of the housing stock is provided outside the market as social and cost rental.

The Housing Commission was disbanded 10 days after the report’s publication. However, one of its members, Professor Michelle Norris from University College Dublin, explained at the meeting held on Tuesday 10 June: “We were told the Housing Agency was being commissioned to do a full costing of the implementation of the commission’s report but we have never seen that or been engaged on that in any way.”

Another member, Michael O’Flynn, CEO of development firm the O’Flynn group, stated that, “despite the fact that it was an independent commission, its report was never formally launched and was largely ignored by government for far too long. The immediate reaction from some in government was that most of our recommendations were already being carried out. This is simply not the case.” 

Fourteen months on, he said, it is “frustrating to see” that none of the recommendations have been implemented.

Today, it is estimated that the housing deficit is “probably in the order of 300,000 homes”, according to commission member Professor Ronan Lyons of Trinity College Dublin. But there is also “an ongoing need on top of that. If we wanted to address the deficit as quickly as [five years], we would need 85,000 to 100,000 homes per year”. 

He added that he didn’t believe there was “any realistic scenario” in which that could be achieved.

Witnesses to the debate referenced European models that have had levels of success, such as Sweden’s Miljonprogrammet project, which saw the creation of a million homes in 10 years, or the means of funding diversification used in France to help deliver homes.

In the summing up of the debate, Rory Hearne, from the Social Democrats, stated: “The amount of time and work [delegates] put in [to the report] is incredible and there is so much in it that the obvious thing is to bring the commission back again.”

The debate can be found here.