An Ireland That Works for All means secure and affordable housing, security of tenure for renters and a more ambitious public housing programme.
You can read our fully costed housing plan from Budget 2024 here.
The Housing Commission report has confirmed what Labour has been saying for over a year – we need much more ambitious housing targets.
We need to build at least 50,000 new homes a year, and retrofit a further 50,000 existing homes to meet our climate targets. Over a decade that’s 1 million homes that must be built and made more energy efficient.
The current government lacks that ambition that Labour would bring to the greatest civil rights issue of a generation.
Instead they continue to break housing records – record homelessness, record rents and average house prices now at the highest in our history.
Home ownership should be a legitimate aspiration for people, but too many are locked out. Years of prosperity have been wasted.
Labour would take action to end the overreliance on private investors in the market and take a State-led approach to building more affordable homes, dealing with the rent crisis and tackling homelessness.
Labour will build, and we will build back fairer. We will protect renters and end speculative land hoarding.
Labour believes everyone has a right to housing and we fully support a referendum on housing in this country to ensure Ireland takes a fairer approach to putting a roof over everyone’s head.
What has gone wrong?
- The government isn’t building enough homes and our social and affordable housing targets are too low.
- The rights of renters are too weak, and rents are still rising too fast. Evictions are causing record homelessness.
- There isn’t enough urgency around tackling vacancy and dereliction.
- The State is too reliant on private developers to build homes and there is too much red tape.
- It is government meddling that has slowed up the planning system due to the introduction of SHDs leading to judicial reviews of An Bord Pleanála decisions.
- Homelessness has reached record highs with over 4,000 children without a home, a 17% increase in a year.
What would Labour do differently?
- Set up a State Housing Construction Company through the Land Development Agency to increase the delivery of public homes to over 20,000 a year, by increasing social homes delivery to 12,000 a year, and 10,000 affordable homes to rent or buy.
- Put in place a skills plan to ensure the system delivers 50,000 homes a year and pay apprentices better. Just over 1,300 employment permits in construction were issued in 2023 – simply nowhere near enough considering the shortage of homes.
- Make Labour’s Renters Rights bill the law to introduce a three year rent freeze and restrict reasons for evictions including an end to no fault evictions.
- Double resources for, and expand the tenant in situ scheme to at least 3,000 homes to ensure renters being evicted because of sale are given the chance to stay in their home.
- Take radical action to tackle vacancy and dereliction including a minimum vacant homes tax of €2,000 a year, and increased funding for councils to purchase vacant and derelict properties.
- Pass strong laws to regulate short term lets like Labour first proposed in our 2017 legislation.
- Ensure housing targets, and public home building includes ringfenced provision for older people and people with disabilities.
Read more about our plans here.
Across the country Labour candidates for your local council are campaigning for more housing, and to tackle vacancy and dereliction. You can read about what they will do if elected as your local Councillor here.
