Governments are a lot like families. The way they succeed is very often the same, and the way they fail is very often unique. We expect governments to deliver on the priorities for which they were elected, and success is judged on the degree to which delivery occurs.

The public mind is a savvy one. It understands many promises are not going to be kept for a variety of reasons. 

In general, however, a government elected to create jobs will be judged on whether it actually created those jobs. A government elected to build houses will be similarly judged. 

Housing is our national obsession. You would expect that we would be better at providing it. We are not.

The Government was elected to deliver more housing and to continue the growth its predecessor enjoyed. That growth is imperilled by changing geoeconomic conditions. The Government must, can, and will respond. I suspect we will be fine on this count.

Stepping back, it says a lot about the capacity of our state that it can grasp and grapple with Donald Trump more easily and with more surety than putting bricks on top of other bricks in fields outside of towns and cities. 

Our state has never had to develop the ability to manage the supply side of our economy over the medium term. This is because the major challenge of the last 50 years was managing demand. For at least the next five years, the major challenge of this Government is to learn how to increase the supply side of this economy.

Likewise, as Covid and the cost-of-living crisis highlighted, our system is much better at dealing with immediate and short-term problems than planning to remedy medium to long-term issues. 

That will take a significant mind-shift that we have struggled to implement up to now, across the political system and across the wider public sector, if we are to deal with the housing crisis. 

So far in its actions, the State has shown absolutely no evidence of its understanding of this problem or any sense of a process to find a series of solutions to these problems. 

Instead, in a triumph of process over outcome, more task forces, bodies, divisions, activation offices, plans, strategies, and press releases have been the order of the day as they have been since time immemorial. The Government was not elected to build committees. But it knows that establishing them gives a lifejacket in the battle to be reelected. 

Yet the people did not elect this Government to set up committees or write reports; they elected the Government to act. 

Housing was not the major challenge of the last government. That was Covid and the cost-of-living crisis.

Housing and infrastructure should be the major challenges of this Government. So far, there is no evidence this is the case.

Think about this: the Government has issued revised housing completion targets of 41,000 this year in its Programme for Government, up from the 34,600 figure in the Housing for All plan. 

The Central Bank says this number will be missed by more than 6,000. 

The ESRI is currently forecasting just over 34,000 new homes will be built this year and 37,000 in 2026. However, as the institute told the Oireachtas Housing Committee last week, “most of the risks weigh on the downside”.

This is a long way short of what pretty much everyone thinks we need – in a recent report, Davy said that Ireland will need to build 93,000 homes a year to meet demand between now and 2031.

The reasons for the crisis are multifaceted, but they are not overly complex.

Central Bank officials told the Housing Committee last week that Ireland’s housing system “faces a stark imbalance”. It says demand significantly exceeds supply and has done so for a decade.

“Increasing delivery means addressing the fundamentals: preparing serviced land [infrastructure], streamlining planning and lifting construction productivity,” it says.

As I have argued before, these issues are surmountable if there is a shift to medium to long-term planning. 

Take Uisce Éireann’s most recent warning on water constraints. It said last week that there will be no capacity for any new homes in Dublin in fewer than three years if a key wastewater project is not delivered.

The €1.3 billion Greater Dublin Drainage (GDD) wastewater treatment facility would serve half a million people in north Dublin and parts of Meath and Kildare. It is not a new or radical proposal – it was first proposed more than 20 years ago and was granted planning permission some six years ago.

However, its progress has been stymied by legal and planning woes ever since. 

If housing is an emergency, we need to unlock some emergency powers to actually unlock housing delivery.

I have covered Irish politics for a long time. I have never sensed this sense of malaise so early on in a government term. James Browne has not enjoyed a great start in the housing portfolio. He is not the only cabinet minister to underwhelm. But his brief is more emotive than most. His handling of the proposed appointment of Brendan McDonagh as housing tsar has dented his political capital.

For it to succeed, the government may have to do what its leaders are extremely averse to, which is seeking radical solutions.

In a podcast with the Irish Times, Simon Harris was asked whether housing was an emergency. He agreed it was. He was then asked, “Are you going to declare an emergency?” and he said no.

Harris’ point was that he did not need any extra powers to implement the solutions to housing that an emergency declaration would give him. If that is true, and if the finances exist to produce more housing, then what is clearly lacking is the will and the actual ability to deliver. 

Without those, this Government is finished, and it has four and a half years to go.

Elsewhere last week…

A vindicated and victorious Gerry Adams has said his nine-year defamation battle was about “putting manners” on the BBC. The jury found the broadcaster had not acted in good faith and awarded the former Sinn Féin leader €100,000. Francesca had the inside story of the trial.

Brightflag, the Irish legal software company, is being acquired for €425 million. The Dutch Euronext-listed IT services firm Wolters Kluwer, which specialises in legal, accounting and finance software, is buying the company in a cash deal. Jonathan examined the detail.

Darren Smith and Mairéad Whelan of Kite Entertainment told Alice why it took five years to get The Traitors into production, how the commissioning landscape works, and what streaming has done to their industry.

Echelon’s CEO Niall Molloy told The Currency about powering its two new data centres, private capital’s role in strengthening the grid, and how the company aims to create a template for green infrastructure.

Jonathan had a number of articles about the links between Russian and Irish companies. He reported how Lukoil Capital DAC was registered months before the war in Ukraine and how it raises money that is funnelled back to the Russian firm, which is a major player in the Kremlin’s economy. He also delved into the story of the Irish company tangled in the turmoil between the Kremlin and a Moscow airport.