Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 19 June 2025

Public Accounts Committee

2023 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 34 - Housing, Local Government and Heritage
Report on the Accounts of the Public Services 2023
Chapter 2 - Central Government Funding of Local Authorities
Chapter 11 - Exceptional State Funding of the Peter McVerry Trust
Chapter 12 - Local Infrastructure Housing Activation Fund
Local Government Fund - Account 2023

2:00 am

Mr. Graham Doyle:

Mr. Benson will provide indicative figures in a moment. As to what has been driving it, we put Housing for All in place back in 2021. The number of headwinds that hit after that were enormous in terms of fallout post Covid and all of that. Inflation and rampant construction and materials inflation have been obvious factors which everyone has commented on. Another factor that often gets missed is the enormous increase in interest rates and what that has meant for the provision of housing, for the financing of housing for developers out there and for AHBs. A lot of our schemes under the cost-rental and affordability model had to be revised because when interest rates moved to the extent they did, many of those models did not work for some of those providers anymore. Those have been some of the really key drivers of cost.