TÁNAISTE SIMON HARRIS has laid the blame for last year’s missed housing targets at the feet of the Department of Housing and former Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien.

Speaking on Claire Byrne’s RTÉ One radio show this morning, Harris said the government should not have been given the 40,000 housing delivery figure by O’Brien last year. 

It was revealed at the end of last month that the government has fallen far short on the number of homes it pledged to deliver in 2024. 

Repeatedly, the public was told 40,000 new homes would be built, but figures from the Central Statistics Office show that only 30,300 were delivered.

The revelation has led to claims by Sinn Féin and other opposition parties that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael “misled the public” in terms of progress on housing.

Harris refuted that claim today and said you can “only mislead the public if you provide information to the public that you know to be untrue.”

“Let’s just take a step back here and remind ourselves what happened,” he said, before going on to state that the three leaders of the last government coalition received a letter from Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien, which stated that Ireland would “come close” to hitting 40,000 homes. 

Harris said that this information was given in “good faith, but it is a statement of fact that that target wasn’t reached.”

In response to this, Claire Byrne interjected and said it was “desperate” that the Department and Minister would give a figure that would be presented to the public that was wrong. 

“They shouldn’t have given you that figure, surely?,” Byrne said. 

“I think that’s true that they shouldn’t have given the figure,” Harris said.

He added: “But I don’t doubt that the figure was given in good faith. They referenced, obviously, the basis of where they were getting that hope and expectation of a large number of houses.”

Asked what the target is for this year, Harris said it is 41,000 homes. 

Earlier this week, Davy Stockbrokers reported that 93,000 new homes are needed per year up to 2031 to meet demand. 

Asked about this, Harris said: “We know we need a hell of a lot more homes… but we also have to be clear on what is possible to deliver in a year, what is the capacity of the market”.

The Programme for Government has committed to delivering 300,000 homes by 2030 – this works out at 60,000 per year on average over the next five years.

Yesterday, The Journal reported that prospective homebuyers were sleeping in their cars this week in an attempt to buy houses in a new estate in Leixlip, Co Kildare. 

Asked about this today in Cork, Taoiseach Micheál Martin said the government will do “everything we possibly can” to avoid similar scenes in the future.