Housing situation 'nothing short of a disaster' says Independent Tom Healy, running in Carlow-Kilkenny

Tom Healy, independent candidate in Carlow-Kilkenny, says data he has obtained indicates a fall in new social house building in counties Carlow and Kilkenny since the last General Election.

In the four-year period, 2020-2023 (since the formation of the present Government), a total of 968 ‘social homes’ were built across the two counties. This represents an average of 242 delivered per year. These figures include new builds as well as ‘turnkey’ dwellings purchased by the two local authorities together with AHBs. Within these totals, the total of newly built dwellings delivered by the two councils, combined, was 266 or 67 per annum.

There were over 1,302 on the housing waiting list for the two counties at the end of 2023 – not counting people in emergency accommodation or doubling up in the family home of which there are several thousands.

Tom Healy says the housing situation in Ireland is nothing short of a disaster: "A failure to invest in housing over many is driving a wedge through Irish society creating the potential for a breakdown in social cohesion and inter-generational solidarity," he said.

"The housing crisis is also providing a fertile ground for the spread of anti-immigrant and far right rhetoric based on unfounded claims and a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the Irish housing crisis which predates the recent increase in inward migration.

"A driving factor behind the housing crises as been the collapse in local authority house building since the 1980s but especially since the economic collapse of 2008-2012. 

Mr Healy says we need to start treating housing as a national emergency on a par with that of Covid and apply a sense of political, administrative and legal urgency to reach a faster delivery of homes.