*Cathaoirleach of Clare County Council, Cllr Joe Killeen (FF) greets An Taoiseach, Micheál Martin (FF). Photograph: Joe Buckley
DESPITE record numbers in emergency accommodation, the Taoiseach has defended Fianna Fáil’s performance on housing while conceding that property prices were “too high”.
During his address at the annual Eamon de Valera commemoration in Ennis on Sunday morning, An Taoiseach Micheál Martin spoke of how the Fianna Fáil founder “overcame enormous hurdles from his earliest days and was sent across an ocean as a young child”.
Latest figures from the Department of Housing for the month of August detail that the number of people in emergency accommodation increased by 358 to a new record of 17,885, that is comprised of 12,055 adults and 5,830 children.
In September, the Central Bank’s quarterly bulletin noted that for homes finished so far in 2026 the average length of time from planning application to completion was four years ago, a decade ago that time span was two years.
In Ennis on Sunday, the Taoiseach was asked by The Clare Echo if the Government he is presiding over is not forcing several young people overseas akin to how de Valera was and that they were following a rule of thumb opposite to ‘build it and they will come’ with the lack of housing options and struggles for individuals to get on the property ladder.
According to the Taoiseach, Ireland is outperforming European counterparts when it comes to construction rates. “There is an increase back into the country in terms of migration, there’s more people coming into the country and more Irish coming back into the country, a lot of people leave for different reasons. We’re the fastest place for house building in Europe, anywhere in the world has a housing challenge and crisis as we speak, if you’re going to Canada or Australia the housing situation is in a worse situation than here, across Europe we’re building houses at the fastest rate by a long shot, it is also evident in the mortgage area that a significant majority of draw downs are for first-time buyers because of the Help to Buy Scheme and First Home Scheme, the measures we have taken to help first-time buyers and young people in particular, that is bearing fruit for young people.
“I accept that prices are high and too high but the only solution is more supply, last year we had 36,000 houses built, we will have more this year, we have to get up to a critical mass of housing, housing supply is key and the housing policy we have is the most substantive programme of housing policy in the country, I don’t think any other party has come near it in terms of concrete solutions to the housing issue, we are working on it day in day out, we’ve brought in a whole series of reforms over the last twelve months which will bear fruit in terms of increased investment. The State is funding about eighty percent of all house building at the moment through a variety of means, there is an unprecedented effort gone into housing, that will continue next year and beyond”.
