The Irish Times view on State spending on housing: vital to get results

The extent of State spending on housing is striking, as is its growth in recent years. An Irish Times analysis puts the figure for 2024 at over €8 billion – and this excludes a couple of areas where precise costs are impossible to estimate. And as various schemes which have commenced in recent years gather pace, further increases in spending are on the way over the next few years.

The scale of the resources being devoted to the housing crisis are appropriate, given the situation that the Government is facing. The question is whether they are being spent in the best way possible? And whether accompanying policies in areas such as planning and regulation are giving the best chance of success?

Both of these questions are important and the forthcoming report of the Commission on Housing will presumably have much of say on them. A particular area of debate is the future of demand supports such as the Help-to-Buy scheme, which do not appear appropriate interventions in a market short of supply, but will still be difficult to end, or phase out. At a wider level, a host of different schemes introduced in recent years, designed to speed the supply of homes, is having varying levels of success – a clear assessment is needed of this spending and whether it is addressing the key problems.

The accompanying policies in areas such as planning are also vital, both in terms of ensuring the right balance and speed in decisions and also resourcing a system which has been under pressure, both at a regulatory level and in the courts. The Government’s pace of action here has been strangely slow in many cases; blockages in these areas, in turn, mean that the billions spent elsewhere have a smaller, and slower, return.

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The report of the commission will, it is to be hoped, provide a framework to assess these issues and for the forthcoming general election campaign. While governments operate on short time-spans housing is, by its nature, a longer-term issue. Any credible strategy needs to accept this.