There has been a broad welcome for the Housing for All plan with charities and business groups saying that if the measures are implemented as outlined it will go some distance towards alleviating the State’s housing crisis.
The Dublin Simon community hailed “the committed targets to eradicating homelessness, housing building and delivery, the enhancement and expansion of Housing”, while the Irish Council for Social Housing (ICSH) welcomed the “enhanced role for approved housing bodies in social housing provision and the expansion of cost-rental homes”.
The older people’s advocacy group Alone said it was reassured by the document’s focus on Ireland’s ageing population and it welcomed plans for local authorities to set out how age-friendly social homes will be delivered for older people, matching the scale and extent of housing need.
The Housing Agency said the range of measures and goals announced represented the Government's "commitment to sustainable and long-term planning and investment in our housing system".
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While giving a broad welcome to the ambitions outlined in the plan, the Society of Chartered Surveyors Ireland (SCSI) said its successful implementation would "depend on the removal of several key barriers to housing delivery" and stressed that a "new sense of urgency and spirit of collaboration was required if those barriers are to be removed and we are to avoid repeating the mistakes of previous housing plans".
The Institute of Professional Auctioneers & Valuers hailed the commitment of €4 billion per annum to build 300,000 homes over the next nine years but it said “the nuts and bolts of how this would be achieved remains to be seen”.
The Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland acknowledged "the scale and ambition" of the plan, while Ibec described it as an ambitious step in addressing one of the country's main social and economic challenges. It said the "biggest single domestic driver of competitiveness pressures for business is the lack of housing supply".
