It is time to abandon the failed Rebuilding Ireland housing policy and its over reliance on the private sector to meet social and affordable housing need. Budget 2021 provides an opportunity to do this and put in place a more ambitious approach. Sinn Féin’s priority would be to deliver public homes on public land to ensure working people have access to genuinely affordable homes to rent and buy. A Sinn Féin Government would commence the largest public house building programme in the history of the state. We would increase capital expenditure for social and affordable housing by an additional €1.5bn on 2020 levels bringing the total capital spend to €2.8bn. This would deliver 20,000 public homes on public land in 2021. We would deliver 12,000 real social homes, 2,000 more than the Governments targets for 2021. We would deliver 8,000 affordable homes, 4,000 affordable cost rental and 4,000 affordable purchase. Public housing would be delivered by Local Authorities, Approved Housing Bodies and Community Housing Trusts.

For decades Governments have relied on the private sector to meet housing demand. Significant sums of public money have been spent directly supporting or indirectly incentivizing private sector development. Tax breaks for investors and developers and lax regulation of mortgage finance drove the house building boom during the late 1990s and early 2000s. The consequence was soaring house prices, rising rents, increased levels of rent supplement dependence and ever longer Local Authority housing lists. While the crash in property prices and rents between 2008 and 2010 off set the worst excesses the absence of either public or private sector investment from 2008 through to 2016 created an even deeper housing crisis.

Rebuilding Ireland contained no public investment in or delivery targets for affordable homes to rent or buy. Instead it offered private developers substantial infrastructure grants through the Local Infrastructure Housing Activation Fund or cheap access to public land through the Joint Venture/Land Initiative models.