Compulsory purchase of lands needed to reach our housing goals

Extra.ie​

21-05-2025

Local authorities have warned that they will not be able to meet housing targets without extra powers to use compulsory purchase orders to acquire land.
The Oireachtas Housing Committee has been told that the State needs to have greater control over land in order to control the housing supply.
And the chair of the County and City Management Association (CCMA), Eddie Taaffe, cautioned that some local authorities face the prospect of running out of land to build on by 2028 and 2029. Overview of a new housing development. Pic: Getty Images
Local councils have identified more than 560 land banks that have capacity for 21,500 homes, but fewer than one third (28%) of these can proceed 'due to inadequate access to essential services such as water, wastewater and electricity'.
Mr Taaffe warned that without adequate levers to provide land to home builders, there will not be an adequate pipeline.
Compulsory purchase orders (CPOs) have not been a prominent feature in recent times, as local authorities had sufficient land banks on which to build. New homes / Housing / For sale. Pic: Getty Images
However, Mr Taaffe said that they are now looking at their land banks and housing delivery for 2028 and 2029 and realising that there isn't enough land and that acquiring serviced land is very difficult.
CPOs will be needed to give 'certainty' to local authorities despite the added cost associated with them, he said.
'CPOs are more expensive. There is a risk. You have to pay market rate – plus a percentage – because under CPO rules you have to pay for disturbance and investment costs,' said Mr Taaffe. Pic: georgeclerk/Getty Images
Local authorities have delivered 24,000 social homes over the period of the current Housing for All programme from 2022 to date, but face significantly increased targets of 12,000 per annum under the new Programme for Government.
Mr Taaffe says hitting these targets will not be possible without substantially increased levels of investment from the Government.
'The new Programme for Government sets out a clear ambition of delivering 12,000 new social homes each year through local authorities and approved housing bodies (AHBs).
This will therefore require a 50% increase in annual output – a scale-up that is simply not feasible without urgent structural support,' he said.
Minister for Housing James Browne will instruct local authorities to rezone more land for housing in their development plans later this year. Minister for Housing James Browne. Pic: Gareth Chaney/Collins
It is expected this will be done by Christmas, but Mr Taaffe said that there is a limited amount of serviced land available.
He also stated that there is a need for utility investment plans to be fully aligned with local housing strategies.
He remarked: 'Uisce Éireann and the ESB must coordinate with local authorities to proactively service land in strategic growth areas.
'The CCMA believes that housing delivery must be backed by dedicated, ring-fenced infrastructure funding, aligned with the investment strategies of key utility providers.
'Infrastructure and utilities must be delivered in tandem with housing to avoid bottlenecks and to unlock development-ready land and accelerate delivery timelines.' Pic: File
Staffing levels in the housing capital building divisions in local authorities were branded a 'huge issue' by Mr Taaffe.
A process of quantifying what level of staff is needed beyond the existing 1,100 is currently ongoing.
'The single biggest constraints are the availability of land and funding of staff to local authorities to progress projects on those lands,' Mr Taaffe said.
A spokeswoman for Minister Browne said that he is committed to reforming the CPO system as promised in the Programme for Government.
'There's an archaic system at the moment, and it needs reform. Minister Browne wants to make it both more effective and more efficient,' she said. 16/11/2022 Minister of State James Browne TD during the announcement of the Government's approval to publish the Family Court Bill and first National Family Justice Strategy at Government Buildings, Dublin. This development marks a significant step towards reform of the Family Justice System and improving access to justice, as committed to by the Programme for Government and Justice Plan 2022. Photo: Gareth Chaney/ Collins Photos
The spokeswoman added: 'It's far too slow. It is delaying the delivery of critical infrastructure for the delivery of housing, and what's there at the moment is difficult to navigate and is outdated.
'The minister wants to make the process actually responsive, the way it needs to be and fit for purpose. But any reform of CPO has to be transparent for councils and property owners.'
Successive governments have struggled to hit their social and affordable housing new-build targets. A total of 9,300 new-build social homes were targeted under the Government's Housing for All plan for 2024. These are homes directly built by local authorities or AHBs. However, just 7,871, a shortfall of 1,429 (15%), were built last year.
Last week, Taoiseach Micheál Martin condemned a 'dependency culture' in councils that seek 'handouts' of tens of thousands of euros to fill vacant social homes in the Dáil.
The Fianna Fáil leader sharply criticised local authorities for seeking up to €60,000 to prepare vacant homes to be re-let, as the country grapples with the housing crisis.
In some areas, properties can lie vacant for over a year, but Mr Martin insisted this should 'never' happen for longer than a month.
More than € 100 million was spent refurbishing more than 3,500 council homes to re-let them in 2023 alone, according to the most recent data.
Much of this relates to properties left vacant when a tenant dies or moves on, with councils required to refurbish them, but the Taoiseach said such large sums should not be needed to bring the homes out of vacancy.
Mr Martin said: 'It is not always about handouts. You can go around certain local authority estates and see six vacant houses. Millions are not needed to put those houses back into use.
'They should never be vacant for beyond a month. I am not just saying this now; I have said this to local authorities time and again. We have taken void initiative after void initiative.
'Voids are houses that have been out of the market for over a year and are generally in disrepair.
Mr Martin added: 'The dependency culture kicks [in], that they will fill a void if given €50,000 or €60,000… If a house is idle because someone left it a month ago, it should be allocated again. We are in a housing crisis.'
Mr Martin was backed up by Fine Gael councillor Jimmy McLearn, a member of the Association of Local Government, who said there was a 'lack of understanding' in councils as to the scale of the challenge in housing, and that 'there shouldn't be'.
Around 3,500 local authority homes on average become vacant every year. Houses can also lie vacant because they are going to be demolished and replaced with new developments.
Councils are legally obligated to furnish and fit out homes they own to a certain standard under the Standard for Rented Houses Regulations, which were set in 2019.