For the four-year period to the end of 2026, Laois County Council was given the target of delivering 534 homes by the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage.
And though there’s an almost endless demand that is hugely difficult to meet, Laois County Council are on course to exceed that target by double. By the end of this year, Laois should have delivered over 1,100 new homes to people in the county.
How have Laois surpassed the target by so much? Was the figure too low in the first place?
“The target we got was based on our population,” explained Michael Rainey recently on the LaoisToday LoveLaois Podcast.
“It was commensurate with targets for other local areas of equivalent size. We would have invested a lot of time, say about 10 years ago, in getting our systems and our processes correct, engaging with approved housing bodies, acquiring land, developing land.
“And the numbers that we’re getting now there’s a lot of work. You don’t get to the point where we are doubling our delivery over target. It doesn’t happen in a year’s programme or a two year’s programme.
“It’s built up from a long series of really smart strategic decisions as a council. So it wouldn’t be any one thing. But I suppose if it was any one thing, there’s always been an ambition not to just meet the target, but to surpass that target.
And that remains today. You could imagine the housing section, the council could say, ‘we’ve 800 units delivered already. The national target’s 534. We can take it easy.’
“But you’ll see over 300 units delivered over the next period, which will bring us to that 1,100 figure.
“People are really, really keen, not just to meet housing targets, but to put keys in people’s hands.
“There’s 300 and I think it’s 307 individuals or families in this county have received a set of keys in the last year, which in the middle of a housing crisis, and particularly if you look what’s going on around the country, that’s really impressive.
“There’s a real sense of satisfaction within our engineering teams and our technical teams in seeing a project delivered and delivered well.”
“Housing is a challenging area to work in,” added Mr Rainey, who is now over a year in the role as CEO in Laois, having previously worked in a similar role in Carlow as well as in the housing department in Laois.
“But I find that anyone I know that I’ve worked with or are working in housing, they really enjoy the challenge.”
“I don’t think the demand will ever go away,” he says of the general demand for housing.
“I remember being at a presentation years ago and it was a reflection on housing headlines over the last 30 years in the papers. And it was I can imagine. Housing crisis in Ireland, housing crisis in Ireland, housing crisis in Ireland.
“And since I’ve worked in housing for a long time now, since 2010 to now, we’ve been in some form of housing crisis.
“But I would say our delivery figures have dramatically increased. We’re broadening now away from just social housing delivery to affordable housing delivery, cost rental delivery, serviced sites delivery.
“There is a recognition, I think within government, but particularly within ourselves in Laois, that we have to serve a wider cohort of citizens than just those that are eligible to social housing.”
The use of approved housing bodies (AHBs) to help deliver homes has regularly been raised as an issue at local council meetings.
But he says that he doesn’t see it as a “them or us” situation.
“One of the things I would have done way back, you know, when I was a housing officer was to build up relationships with the large approved housing bodies in this country … there’s many that have come into this county and delivered really high quality product.
“We wouldn’t be in the situation, the positive place we are in terms of targets, et cetera, without that genuine partnership approach that we have with AHBs. And we’ve been lucky.
“Some councils don’t enjoy as much AHB development as we do. And so I see it as a huge positive that we have the AHBs active in this county. There’s enough of a demand for both AHBs and for ourselves to still supply product and still there be demand.
“So I don’t think it’s a them or us situation. I don’t think it’s a one or the other.
“I think it’s about working in partnership to deliver as many homes as possible in a sustainable manner and, you know, to build communities.”
at the issue? And we’ve service sites now available in a number of towns around the country. Our plan is to, around the county, our plan is to develop more and more of them.
You can listen to the episode in full below – or on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
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