The launch of Sinn Féin’s housing policy in the Republic has drawn some critical comparisons with the party’s performance north of the Border.

When Stormont was restored in 2020, Sinn Féin chose the housing portfolio and subsequently announced it had a plan to build 100,000 social and affordable homes over 15 years, equivalent to 6,700 a year. Social housing starts have since averaged 700 a year and could be as low as 400 this year, due to a budget cut from Sinn Féin’s Finance Minister, although the DUP is now in charge of housing. Total house building, public and private, is just more than 5,000 a year, half the region’s need.

Plans would always have taken time to ramp up, however, and most of the period since 2020 was disrupted by the pandemic and a collapse of devolution.

Some Sinn Féin representatives have offered less plausible excuses, including mandatory coalition and lack of tax-raising powers. Stormont has extensive powers to tax property, while any Sinn Féin-led government in Dublin would presumably also be a coalition.

North-South comparisons tend to assume Sinn Féin should be criticised for having different policies either side of the Border. In reality, different policies are usually appropriate. It........

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