Sinn Féin housing spokesperson Eoin Ó Broin has said that the ESRI housing report published today is an underestimation of the number of new homes needed annually as it does not include pent-up demand.

The Dublin Mid-West TD’s comments were made in response to an ESRI report that states structural demand requires an average of 44,000 new homes a year from 2023 to 2030.

Teachta Ó Broin said:

“Today’s report from the ESRI is an important piece of work. It sets out to calculate what the structural demand for new homes is going to be from now to 2030 and from 2030 to 2040.

“The report looks at a number of scenarios of population growth, household size and levels of obsolescence within the existing housing stock.

“This provides them with a structural housing demand range of between 35,000 and 53,000 new homes needed a year for the next decade. This mid-point of the range estimates a need for 44,000 new homes a year out to 2030 and 40,000 new homes a year from 2030 to 2040.

“However, the report does not include an estimate for pent up demand, the number of new homes that are needed to meet the current unmet demand within the existing population.

“Because of this the ESRI report significantly under estimates the number of new homes needed to meet total housing demand, which combines structural demand and pent-up demand.

“To be fair to the ESRI, they make this clear in the detail of the report. It is also important to point out that the omission of pent-up demand was not decided by the ESRI but the Minister for Housing Darragh O’Brien and his officials in the Department of Housing, who commissioned the report.

“The recently published Housing Commission report does include an estimate for pent-up demand, what they call the housing deficit, of between 212,500 and 256,000 homes. These are needed to meet current unmet demand.

“The Housing Commission also argued that meeting unmet demand must be achieved from 2024 to 2030 which would require an annual average of 60,000 new homes a year, peaking in 2030 at 70,000 new homes. This is significantly more than the ESRI’s structural demand of 44,000 a year to 2030.

“The Minister for Housing Darragh O’Brien should have asked his officials to include an estimate of unmet demand in the ESRI study published today. That would have given us a further body of evidence to inform housing targets in the time ahead.

“Instead, just as he did in 2020, the Minister and his officials prevented the ESRI from producing an estimate of total housing demand. This was a political decision back in 2020 to massage the housing need figures downwards in order to justify what were always wholly inadequate housing targets in the Government 2021 housing plan.

“It is important when revising his housing figures in the Autumn that the Minister does not repeat this political massaging of the figures. He and his officials must combine the ESRI estimate for structural demand with the Housing Commission estimate for unmet demand, to ensure that finally we get housing targets that are based on a true estimate of need.”