Budget 2027 comes at a time when the rising cost of living remains a serious issue for households across Ireland.  This is certainly true of Co-operative Housing Ireland’s member tenants who have consistently flagged rapidly rising expenses as their primary concern in recent surveys. This is supported by the observations of Neighbourhood Specialists who see member tenants struggling to meet the competing financial demands of energy bills, food, transport, and rent.  

The continued high level of demand and need for social-rental and affordable housing in Ireland underpins many of the cost-of-living issues which must be addressed by the Budget.

The new housing plan, Delivering Homes, Building Communities 2025–2030, outlines the ambitious target of delivering 300,000 homes by the end of 2030 including 72,000 social-rental and 90,000 affordable/starter homes . This will require annual delivery of 50,000-60,000 units per year, a significant increase on the 36,284 new dwelling completions in 2025.

With 918 new homes delivered in 2025, Co-operative Housing Ireland was responsible for roughly 2.5% of all delivery last year. In terms of social-rental homes, 9,098 were delivered in 2025, meaning CHI delivered roughly 10%. To keep pace with this social-rental delivery, CHI will need to delivery up to 7,200 additional homes by the end of 2030.

Co-operative Housing Ireland’s vision is of a society where everyone has access to housing delivered co-operatively. With this in mind, CHI’s priority for the upcoming budget is ensuring that AHBs are supported to continue to deliver, manage and maintain the high-quality affordable homes required to meet needs. This can be accomplished through:

1) Guaranteeing sustainable funding for social-rental and affordable housing.

2) Incentivising the utilization of Modern Methods of Construction and supporting retrofit programs.

3) Reinvigorating the ‘third arm’ of housing delivery, co-operatives.

4) Supporting the consolidation of the AHB sector through mergers and stock transfers.

If you have any questions or comments regarding this pre-budget submission, please contact Housing Policy Lead Andrew Daly at Andrew.Daly@Cooperativehousing.ie

VIEW THE FULL PRE-BUDGET SUBMISSION HERE.

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