‘A rip off’ – Housing minister proposes decreasing affordable housing in Dublin and Cork

The move is part of wider reforms to the Land Development Agency, which was set up to provide housing on public land.

Minister for Housing James Browne will seek approval from the cabinet on new legislation that requires all developments built on public land to comprise 50% social and affordable housing.

This will be a reduction of the current standard, where the affordable housing share is 80% in places like Dublin and Cork with a population above 150,000. It is 50% elsewhere.

The change means that areas with large populations would see lower affordable housing share, with a higher proportion of homes built for private sale.

The move has been criticised by Sinn Fein's housing spokesperson Eoin O'Broin.

"The LDA is missing it’s cost rental targets. The Government is missing their affordable purchase targets. So the solution is to deliver less affordable homes and allow the LDA to sell homes on the private market at rip off prices. This is a very bad decision which will make the affordable crisis worse. And the reason? Because the Government doesn’t have a long term funding plan for the LDA," he told JOE.

A spokesperson for Minister Browne said: "It’s not a reduction in affordable housing - it’s a change to the required mix essentially so that there can be more houses bought privately by homeowners.

"This means a better tenure mix and you can recycle the capital from the private sale to build more public and private somewhere else and repeat. That’s exactly what we want to do faster"

935 affordable purchase homes were delivered by government in 2025. 55% below the promised target of 2,100 affordable purchase homes, some are priced up to €500,000.

The government also marginally missed their cost rental target for last year, 2,295 were finalised of a promised 2,350.

In May, there were 17,447 homeless people in Ireland.

11,864 adults and 5,583 children were availing of emergency State provided accommodation last month.