Social Housing Management, Governance and Delivery in Ireland: Ten Years of Reform on Seven Estates

Abstract

This paper examines developments in social housing management, governance and delivery in the Republic of Ireland during the last decade, using evidence from two rounds of research conducted in 1997 and 2007 on seven social rented estates, located in a variety of regions. Among the three most significant developments in this regard, the reconceptualisation of the housing management function has had the most positive impact on the views of tenants. Some aspects of the externalisation of social housing provision, such as the growth of the housing association sector and the use of PPP arrangements for social housing regeneration, have also been positive, but the future of this externalisation agenda is uncertain. The impact of the various reforms to the management of the social housing service, such as advent of strategic policy making and performance monitoring, has been uneven in some cases and uniformly low in others.