The Government is set to come under intense pressure on housing as the Opposition targets its record in the opening days of the general election campaign.
Taoiseach Simon Harris will today travel to Áras an Uachtaráin and ask the President to dissolve the Dáil, marking the formal start of the campaign which will culminate on polling day, November 29th.
The Opposition will launch a range of housing policies, starting today, while elsewhere there is fresh criticism of the Coalition’s recently agreed home building targets from a member of the Government-appointed Housing Commission which reported earlier this year.
Ronan Lyons, associate professor in economics at Trinity College Dublin, welcomed the introduction of the targets, which aim to deliver 303,000 homes by 2030, saying they brought official policy “closer” to meeting demand.
However, he said that they conflated the capacity of the building sector with the underlying requirement for homes and “go directly against the recommendation of the Housing Commission, that targets be set with societal requirements in mind, separate to construction sector capacity”.
“Further, the new targets do not take account of unmet need, as described in the Housing Commission’s report,” he said, adding that pent-up demand which has not been met already was estimated to be up to 250,000 homes as of early 2022.
The Labour Party will today unveil manifesto plans to wind down subsidies which the Government has made a core part of its offering, but which it says have driven house price inflation – including a plan to wind down the Help to Buy scheme by 2029, similar to plans already announced by Sinn Féin.
The party will introduce an SSIA-style save-to-buy scheme and introduce new income limits for participating in the scheme to cut out higher income households, with the party to argue that half the spend on Help to Buy went to people who did not need it. It will also introduce a rent-to-buy scheme for those in cost-rental housing.
Fianna Fáil has said that retaining the Help to Buy scheme would be a red line issue in government formation talks following the election.
On Thursday, Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald said that housing will be “the biggest issue” in the campaign.
“If society and if government continues to fail in this area, there are economic and social consequences that are profound and far-reaching. I don’t believe that housing will be sorted out by a government led by either Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael,” she said at the launch of the party’s Dublin Central general election campaign.
Next Friday, the Social Democrats will launch its housing policy. The party will promise 50,000 affordable purchase homes out to 2029 – double what Sinn Féin is promising – with households earning a gross income of up to €110,000 eligible for their schemes.
The first significant televised debate of the campaign will air on RTÉ on Monday night, focusing on housing.
There was more intra-Coalition friction on Thursday when Green Party leader Roderic O’Gorman said his party had to “deal with sniping every day across the last 4½ years”.
The campaign will officially begin when President Michael D Higgins dissolves the Dáil, though in reality politicians have been on an election footing for weeks.
Mr Harris is expected to canvass in nearby Castleknock, then Lucan, before attending the Ireland against New Zealand rugby match at the Aviva. The new Dáil is expected to meet the week before Christmas, meaning that a new government is unlikely to be in place until the new year.
