Minister Jack Chambers “deliberately deceived” the public during the election campaign by ignoring housing data, a Sinn Fein TD has said.
The party’s finance spokesperson Pearse Doherty said that if information on new-home builds had been made public, it would have changed the result of the election.
A spokesperson for Mr Chambers, who is now the public expenditure minister, said he rejects Mr Doherty’s claims.
Jack Chambers ‘deliberately deceived’ the Irish public, a Sinn Fein TD has claimed (Brian Lawless/PA)
Senior government figures have been criticised for claiming during the election campaign that close to 40,000 new homes would be built in 2024.
The Housing for All plan set a target of 33,450 new-builds for 2024, with a total of 30,330 built, according to the Central Statistics Office (CSO) – a drop of 6.7% on 2023.
Speaking on the Leinster House plinth on Thursday, Mr Doherty claimed that a document from the Department of Finance’s Budget & Economics Division showed the government had “decided consciously to mislead the Irish public”.
He said that before the Dail was dissolved on November 8, Mr Chambers – the then finance minister – received a report analysing data on housing progress.
The seven-page report states that there were 21,634 new homes completed in the first nine months of the year, 3.1% lower than the same period in 2023.
“The outturn for completions appears to be broadly consistent with recent downward revisions to forecasts from the Central Bank, which project housing output to be similar to 2023,” it said.
Mr Doherty said the report from the Budget & Economics Division of his Department made it “very clear” that it was “not achievable” to reach 40,000 new-builds by the end of the year.
“Despite this, we had the Minister of Finance go on the national broadcaster, on Virgin Media, on other radio stations, claiming that they were on a pathway to 40,000, that they were going to deliver far more houses than they delivered the previous year, which was simply untrue,” the Donegal TD said.
“Why did he deliberately mislead the Irish public? Why did he bury a report that he had from his department, which said that the prediction was that they would deliver the same, if not less, houses than the previous year?
“Why did he allow Micheal Martin, his party leader, to continue to trump the same untruth? Why did he allow the Taoiseach and others to do the same?”
Asked whether he believed the publishing of the housing figures would have changed the outcome of the election, Mr Doherty said: “If you have a report that comes out on the eve of the election, and the minister has to stand up and say ‘The officials in my department are of the same view as the Central Bank, and we’re likely to deliver less houses this year than we did last year’, then of course that’s going to change the outcome of the election.”
A spokesman for Mr Chambers said: “The Minister for Finance receives a monthly housing update which summarises reports, projections and publications in the public domain.
“The November 2024 submission referenced CSO data published on October 24th, 2024 and previous Central Bank projections.
“This information was not new. The CSO data had been published two weeks earlier and was debated in the Dail on the day of publication.
“The Minister was already aware of these inputs from the CSO and the Central Bank.
“Minister Chambers rejects the assertions by Deputy Doherty. There were many different bodies and agencies giving varied projections on housing numbers at the time which were in the public domain.”