Towards an Affordable and Secure Homes Strategy in Budget 2027
Ireland is facing a deepening housing and homelessness crisis. While the Government’s latest housing plan commits to delivering 300,000 homes, including 72,000 social homes, by 2030, this falls short of what is required to address both the existing housing deficit and future population growth. At the same time, housing policy continues to rely heavily on the private market to meet housing need.
The recent changes to rent regulations, introduced to strengthen protections for tenants, have coincided with a sharp increase in eviction notices, highlighting the insecurity of this model to provide long-term housing solutions, particularly for low-income households. Too many individuals and families remain vulnerable to housing instability, while access to affordable and secure accommodation continues to deteriorate.
Compounding this, the government has repeatedly failed to meet its own social housing targets, with a cumulative shortfall of c.5,000 homes since 2022. Beyond delivery figures, capacity constraints within the construction sector and deficiencies in enabling infrastructure continue to undermine progress. These unmet housing needs disproportionately affect younger adults and lower-income cohorts, and are increasingly affecting older people now.
Stronger Social Housing System
Addressing Ireland’s housing deficit requires a substantial and sustained increase in social housing provision. Expanding the social housing stock is essential to meeting current need and reducing pressure on house prices and rents over time. Currently, around 9 per cent of the Ireland’s housing stock is social housing, this is below many of our European peers.
Social Justice Ireland supports the Housing Commission’s recommendation for a targeted increase in the share of social and cost-rental housing and proposes that Government sets a target for 20 per cent of all housing stock to be social housing by 2040. This would equate to c.390,000 units to be delivered in the next 14 years. This requires scaling up delivery, beginning with an annual target of 20,000 units for the next five years, up from the current 12,000 as committed in the Programme for Government. This scale of provision reflects the broader level of housing need, including the role of HAP-supported tenancies in meeting social housing demand. To achieve this, an additional €2.16bn in capital investment is needed in Budget 2027. The need at the end of 2025 stands at 134,000, based on the social housing waiting lists, HAP and RAS tenancies, and households in receipt of Rent Supplement. This figure does not account for households leaving Direct Provision; new households fleeing war; households in refuges for domestic abuse; the majority of the homeless as currently counted; nor all of the homeless not currently counted within official data (as counted under an ETHOS typology proposed by FEANSTA).
Investing in social housing will not only reduce dependence on subsidies, lower long-term costs to the exchequer, and provide secure, affordable homes for those most in need. It will also create a valuable long-term public asset for future generations and strengthen the State’s housing system.
A Real Rent Relief
The Rent Tax Credit, in its current structure, fails to support low-income renters. Because the credit is non-refundable, many low-income renters do not receive its full value despite facing the most acute affordability pressures. Recent analysis by the Department of Finance has shown that the greatest benefits accrue to middle- and higher-income households with sufficient tax liabilities to fully utilise the credit. To improve fairness and effectiveness, Social Justice Ireland calls on Government to make the Rent Tax credit refundable in Budget 2027, at an estimated additional cost of €39m and to introduce an income ceiling of €100,000 for eligibility. These reform would ensure that low-income renters benefit fully from the support available, while better targeting public resources towards those facing the greatest affordability challenges.
Housing First, Not Hidden Homelessness
Homelessness is becoming normalised. In May 2026, a record 17,548 people, including 5,604 children, accessed emergency homeless accommodation. Family homelessness has increased by 140per cent over the past decade (from 1,130 families in July 2016 to 2,707 in April 2026), and by almost 170 per cent since the introduction of Housing for All in September 2021. These are the ‘official’ data on homelessness. They do not include those staying with family and friends, rough sleepers, homeless families temporarily accommodated in housing owned by their Local Authority, women and children in domestic violence refuges, or asylum seekers in transitional accommodation. In 2019, a European Commission report referred to the current state of data collection on homelessness in Ireland as “statistical obfuscation if not ‘corruption’.”
According to a Focus Ireland report, the average expenditure on services for households experiencing homelessness has observed a significant increase, with €2.2bn expended over the period between 2014-2023. A breakdown of 2024 Local Authority Regional Financial Reports spending patterns reveal an imbalance in resource allocation. Local Authorities spent 18 times more on emergency accommodation than homelessness prevention, tenancy sustainment and resettlement supports. Additionally, 70 per cent of emergency accommodation expenditure was on private emergency accommodation, including commercial hotels and B&Bs. This continued over-reliance on emergency accommodation as opposed to prevention supports and long-term solutions raises concerns about the sustainability and effectiveness of current spending, emphasising the urgent need for a shift toward prevention-focused policies and housing-first approaches.
IHREC suggested an amendment to section 10 of the Housing Act 1988 to limit the amount of time a family may spend in Family Hubs as well as other forms of emergency housing, a similar regime as in Scotland and something for which we have been advocating. Social Justice Ireland calls on Government to extend the housing first approach in Budget 2027 to homeless families accessing emergency accommodation, at a cost of €130m. This can be supported by abolishing regressive subsidies like the Help to Buy scheme and Shared Equity Scheme, while also allowing government to make savings by winding down family hubs and emergency accommodation.