State or market? Meeting social housing needs in twenty-first century Ireland

In this final chapter the exploration of the experiences of social housing in Irelandwill be resumed. The context for this is an analysis of more recent trends in the housingmarket, especially since the early 1990's when, more than any other area of Irish socialpolicy, housing assumed a hugely influential role. Though there was a comparativeimprovement in numerical terms in social housing output during the mid 1990's relativeto the lean years of the late 1980's this was largely overshadowed by the huge upsurge inprivate building and the exceptional growth in demand for social housing which occurredtowards the end of the decade. The so called "Celtic Tiger" era witnessed a sustainedperiod of growth in house building with record levels of output being achieved, however,social housing output fell in relative terms despite the record numbers of householdsbeing assessed as being in housing need. Thus while social housing output reached 3,000units in 1995 it represented only ten percent of total building. Though output (throughnew build and acquisitions) rose to 5,000 units in 2001 this represented only eight percentof total new build. Subsequent years saw this pattern maintained as private housing setnew records almost. In 2005 almost 81,000 new homes were built but less than 5,600 ofthese were in the social housing sector which in comparative terms is less than a third ofthe proportion built back in the mid 1970's. As of the Census of 2002 social housingaccounted for approximately 88,000 units of the 1.2 million dwellings nationally.