Dublin City Council is grappling with how to meet new government target for delivering social and affordable homes

Dublin City Council has been set delivery targets of 10,158 social homes and 9,226 "starter homes" from 2027 to 2030, said a council official at last week's housing committee meeting.

Ruth Dowling, an executive manager in housing delivery, also took a moment at the meeting in City Hall to explain to councillors what "starter homes" are.

They're what used to be called affordable purchase and cost-rental. The Department of Housing has rebranded them, she said.

Councillors threw the new terminology in, awkwardly, every now and then.

The lengthy discussion that followed, though, was mostly about the work that the council is doing to give it a shot at reaching those targets, how officials are charting out what kinds of home are needed – what size, what breakdown of tenure – and what barriers there are to achieving that.

The council's current tally of projects in its pipeline wouldn't get it to the goal, said Mick Mulhern, the council's head of housing.

That is about 11,000 homes, the chart shows, well short of the 19,400 target.

But council officials already know some projects are missing from their published pipeline, Mulhern said.

Still to add is housing on Land Development Agency-owned sites, such as its project at Clongriffin, and approved housing body projects that are likely to finish post-2028, said Mulhern.

Some of the later Part V homes – the portion of big private developments which are bought by the council as social and affordable homes – aren't counted yet either, and those can be hard to predict, he said.

So they'll be adding in those in the next few months, with the rationale that if some work isn't already underway on a scheme, it's unlikely to be finished within this period, he said.

In September, they'll hopefully have a clearer picture of the gap, said Mulhern. "We'll either be alarming, or maybe we'll be a bit more optimistic about it."

Assessing need

The council's current Housing Delivery Action Plan, which runs from 2022 to 2026, set a new-build target of 9,087 social homes, and a more modest figure of 4,021 affordable homes.

By the end of 2025, it and its partners had delivered 3,719 social homes and 950 affordable homes, show department statistics.

Now, the council is drawing up its next Housing Delivery Action Plan, said Dowling, at the meeting.

They're looking at key questions as they do, she said. "Are we delivering the right quantum of homes? Are we achieving the right balance between social and affordable homes?"

How's the current pipeline looking and does that match need? she said.

The first step in answering those is drawing up what is called a Housing Need and Demand Assessment, she said. Work is already underway on that, she said.

At the moment, one mismatch in current assessments of housing need by the Department of Housing, and by Dublin City Council, is what size social homes are needed.

As officials in the Department of Housing count it, about three-quarters of the new social homes to be built in Dublin City in the coming years should be studios and one-beds.

As officials at Dublin City Council see it, just fewer than half should be.

Dowling, head of housing delivery at the council, gently pointed to that difference.

"As you'll see, there's a slight, well there's discrepancies right down the different bedroom mixes," she said. On screen, was a table.

Pat Dunne, an Independents4Change councillor, said it was interesting to see the bedroom mix. He has been critical of that at council meetings, he said, as he couldn't see evidence that the council was prioritising three-bedroom homes.

There's clearly more people seeking one-beds than three-beds, he said. "We accept that."

But often, those who need three-beds are living in overcrowded conditions in family homes, with two or three children, he said. "So the case to prioritise three-bedroom homes is very, very strong."

"Ideally we should be able to build everything that we need to build in terms of the right mix," he said. But they need to take those social factors into account, he said.

Said Green Party Councillor Ray Cunningham: "Do we have any understanding of how their social needs assessment is so different from our own?"

Dowling said that the department's figures are based on its own model run by the department itself. "We haven't interrogated that model yet."

The council's figures are based on its housing and transfer lists, she said. They'll be meeting with the department to talk it all through though, she said.

Later, Sinn Féin Councillor Daithí Doolan said he thinks the department is always more bureaucratic, and trying to drive costs down. "I think they're constantly trying to restrict the size, the space, the standards for individuals. They're always going for the cheaper option."

Still, exactly why the calculations differ is unclear.

Dowling said that the council is grappling with how to increase the supply of three- and four-bed social homes. They are talking to the department about funding challenges with delivering larger homes, she said.

They're meeting with the LDA and AHBs too, she said. "Its incumbent on us to be very clear in our interactions around what is that need."

Dunne, the Independents4Change councillor, said the "financial contribution scheme" used to be a good way to provide three-bed social homes, he said. They should go to the department and pressure them to bring it back, he said.

At the meeting, Mulhern said that agreeing with the Department of Housing ahead of time what bed mix is needed overall in the city should help move projects along faster, and help the department assess the funding need.

"You can find yourself in protracted negotiations with the department about what the right bed mix is for a scheme," he said.

But pinning it down now should change that, he said. "So in theory it should move it quicker."

What and where?

During the meeting, officials and councillors also ran through the challenges with the viability of affordable purchase and cost-rental homes in different neighbourhoods across the city.

While the central government targets are for 9,226 "starter homes", it's up to the council to decide how that splits between affordable purchase and cost-rental homes, said Dowling.

To date, there have been 530 cost-rental homes delivered in Dublin city, said Mulhern. But there are challenges, he said.

Among them, getting the rents below 25 percent of market rate -- a threshold that cost-rentals must meet to get funding -- can be hard if rents in the surrounding area are relatively low, he said. "We're seeing that in places like Ballymun or Ballyfermot, which can be challenging."

Also, the income cap is set at €66,ooo in Dublin, and that isn't index-linked, said Mulhern. So, in five years time, with inflation, the cohort who are eligible will have shrunk, he said.

Councillors talked about whether projects shake out as actually affordable at the moment, given delivery costs have risen.

Increased subvention should be looked at to bring rents down, said independent Councillor Cieran Perry. "We spent absolutely billions on the likes of HAP", he said, referring to the Housing Assistance Payment, a subsidy for low-income renters.

Jim Baneham, of the Housing Agency, was at the meeting to give an overview of cost-rental model.

"I think if our department was here, they might say that they have sought some increases in subvention," he said, "and the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, I know they have a longer name now, but effectively, the kind of Jack Chambers side of things are not keen to allow that to happen."

Financial sustainability is important for the future of the sector too, he said.

Dunne, the councillor, asked what could be done to help those who fall through the stools of earning too much for social housing, and too little for cost-rental.

The council should make the case with the department that social housing limits should be upped, or people should be allowed to spend more than 35 percent of their income on cost-rents, he said. "We need to look after those people who fall between those two stools."

Fianna Fáil Councillor Deirdre Heney called for more affordable purchase.

The council has about 1,000 affordable purchase homes in the pipeline at the moment, said Mulhern. And, "it's just us that are currently doing it at the moment", said Mulhern. Not AHBs and the LDA, he said.

Demand is mostly for houses rather than apartments too, although affordable-purchase apartments have been successful in Montpelier, he said, referring to new development on the former O'Devaney Gardens site in Dublin 7.

Dowling said high construction costs, and "abnormals" – which can mean the need to divert infrastructure, or deal with other legacy issues with a site – are creating issues for that tenure, too. It's challenging in lower-income parts of the city, she said.

Said Mulhern: "How we up that level of affordable purchase delivery over the next period I think is probably one of the biggest challenges that we're going to face in our Housing Delivery Action Plan."

Alan Robinson, who represents the Docklands Business Forum on the committee, said that 78 percent of people in the city live in private accommodation according to the last census. "Is there any effort in this exercise to facilitate those citizens?"

"And is this an opportunity to redress the socio-economic balance of housing within the canals, north and south of the river, and encourage people with middle and high incomes to return to the centre of the city to live and spend?" he said.

Mulhern, the council's housing manager, said that the Housing Delivery Action Plan is solely about the delivery of social and affordable housing, or "starter homes". "Outside of that is the private delivery."

Within what the council is planning, part of the challenge is what is the right balance between social and starter homes delivery in neighbourhoods, he said. "How do we spread that balance right across the city?"