Eoin Ó Broin TD: ‘Housing can be fixed, but only with a radical reset of housing policy’

Writing in eolas Magazine, Sinn Féin housing spokesperson Eoin Ó Broin TD analyses Delivering Homes, Building Communities and outlines Sinn Féin’s alternative housing plan, A Home of Your Own.

We have a new government with a new housing plan, but unfortunately the same old problems remain. The Fianna Fáil-Fine Gael-Independent coalition was formed in January 2025. James Browne TD has now been Minister for Housing for almost 15 months. His new housing plan was published in November 2025.

Yet, housing output continues to lag significantly behind demand, social and affordable housing targets continue to be missed, and house prices, rents, and levels of homelessness all continue to rise.

Most of the Government’s new housing plan is a cut and paste from the failed 2020 plan of former Minister for Housing Darragh O’Brien TD, Housing for All. The only significant change is a trio of policies which the Government is hoping will significantly boost supply.

In summer 2025, the Minister significantly reduced design standards for new apartment developments. This will lead to smaller, darker homes, in higher density developments will less amenities.

In the October 2025 Budget, the Government gave a massive €640 million vat reduction for new apartment developments that are already under construction and clearly have no viability issues.

Then, in March 2026, new rent regulations came into effect, allowing landlords to reset rents to market levels in between tenancies.

Of tenancies registered every year, 25 per cent are new tenancies, and the gap between existing and new rents ranges from €3,000 to €5,000 per year depending on location. This means that within just a few years, the majority of renters will be paying thousands more in rent each year.

The tragedy of this policy cocktail is not only will renters be paying every higher rent for poorer quality apartments. It will, at best, only lead to a modest increase in supply and only in some parts of Dublin and possibly Cork.

The Government’s big gamble is to put their faith in the institutional investment private rental sector as the main driver of increased supply. What this demonstrates is that they have been completely captured by the corporate lobbyists of Irish Institutional Property.

The consequence will be a continued undersupply of social, affordable, and private-for-purchase homes. The affordable homes that will be delivered, whether for purchase or cost rental, will be too expensive for many. House prices and private rents will continue to rise. The homeless crisis will deepen, and employers, both public and private, will struggle to fill vacancies as our young people will be forced to emigrate in search of affordable homes.

Of course it does not have to be this way. There are clear alternatives to fix housing. Sinn Féin has set these out in our alternative housing plan, A Home of Your Own. The Government’s own Housing Commission has done likewise.

So here are 11 things that the Government could do now, to start to undo the damage of a decade of bad Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael housing policy.

“We have a new Government with a new housing plan but, unfortunately, the same old problems remain.” continue to be missed, and house prices, rents, and levels of homelessness all continue to rise.”

1. Double the investment in social housing delivered by local authorities and approved housing bodies while streamlining the delivery mechanisms. Set a new target of at least 15,000 new build social homes a year starting from 2027 compared to just 9,089 delivered in 2025.

2. Increase the delivery of cost rental and affordable purchase homes to 10,000 a year from just 3,220 last year and restructure the schemes to dramatically reduce the cost of renting and buying these homes so that working people can afford them.

3. Activate the SME builder-developer sector to double their output of private for purchase homes in every county in the State. This can be done through lowering the cost of finance from HBFI, increasing cost effective site servicing from HISCo, speeding up planning with statutory timelines for all residential developments, and providing a targeted development levy and water connection waiver for SME developments for the private for purchase market.

4. Bring more derelict and vacant homes back into use by setting ambitious targets for local authorities as part of their public housing programme while introducing a punitive tax on vacancy and dereliction.
5. Protect renters from rip-off rents with an emergency three-year ban on rent increases for existing and new tenants, put a full month’s rent back into every private renter’s pocket and provide them with pathways into the housing tenure that actually meets their needs.

6. Introduce an emergency package of measures to end long-term homelessness by 2030. This would include a temporary ban on no-fault evictions, restoring funding for tenant-in-situ, doubling funding for Housing First, increased allocations for people in emergency accommodation, and the use of emergency planning and procurement powers to deliver a specific stream of social housing to exit older people and families with children from homelessness.

7. Introduce a real 100 per cent redress scheme for owners and renters in homes impacted by Celtic Tiger-era building defects including defective concrete, fire safety, and other structural defects.

8. Adequately fund Dublin and Cork city councils to bring flat complexes built from the 1930s to the 1970s up to current standards without any conditions on density or unit reduction.

9. Provide planning authorities, An Coimisiún Pleanála, and the environmental and planning court with adequate staff and judges to ensure planning permissions and judicial reviews are dealt with in a timely manner.

10. Publish the long-awaited planning guidelines for rural, Gaeltacht, and island communities, and support those communities to tackle population stagnation and decline through the delivery of homes that are socially, economically, and environmentally sustainable.

11. Reform our procurement, planning, and building methodologies to ensure that we can deliver an average of 60,000 new homes a year while dramatically reducing their embodied carbon and meeting our 2030 and 2050 carbon reduction targets.

The full detail of how all of this can be done is set out in Sinn Féin’s alternative housing plan. At a time of an ever-deepening housing crisis, people need hope. They need to know that housing can be fixed. That can only be done with a radical reset of housing policy, and Sinn Féin has set out exactly how this can be done.