NEW ENVIRONMENT MINISTER – INCREASE HOUSING SUPPLY.

New Environment Minister – increase housing supply.

by Ruth Baily

The new Minister for the Environment and Housing Alan Kelly TD has said that the best way to deal with the current property price spiral is to increase supply of both social and private housing. Tackling the housing supply shortage is something the CIF has been calling for over a long time.

Minister Kelly said that in order to reach the Government’s target of 25,000 units per year a combination of initiatives were being looked at including direct financing, public-private partnerships and local authorities setting up their own financing instruments.

Minister Kelly said, “There are considerable challenges…Isn’t it quite amazing we have a need for more private housing considering we were building almost 100,000 a year a few years ago.”

He said he would try to create the conditions to allow this to happen. He had already met Nama, which said it would build 22,000 units over the next five years.

His comments were backed up by the Minister for Public Expenditure Brendan Howlin TD who said –

 “There is a certain irony that after a housing boom, when we were building more houses than Britain just a few short years ago, that we’ve a housing shortage now. And we need to fix that.

“It is a supply side issue. We need to work on a variety of platforms to ensure that the supply of houses is dramatically increased to deal with the issue of social housing and housing in the commercial sector.”

These are positive comments from both Ministers and the CIF hopes to work with the Government to achieve more supply, and help to put in to action the 75 actions outlined in Construction 2020 which would help to address the problem.