Fewer than 300 houses have been completed to date under the Government's commitment to see 7,500 affordable houses constructed on State and local authority lands, as part of the February 2003 Sustaining Progress agreement with the social partners.
According to figures released by the Department of the Environment, less than 10 per cent of the promised houses are under construction, and the majority of sites identified in the programme are still at a pre-planning phase.
However, yesterday the Minister of State for Housing Noel Ahern defended the Government's record on affordable housing, stating that 2,900 affordable houses were completed last year.
He said 15,000 affordable houses would be provided under various initiatives between 2006 and 2008.
Under the Sustaining Progress agreement, signed in 2003 and which is coming to an end, the Government committed itself to providing an extra 10,000 affordable homes. These included 2,500 units to be provided under part five of the Planning Act, which requires builders to set aside one fifth of large developments for affordable housing.
In figures supplied to Labour TD Róisín Shortall last week, the Department of the Environment outlined progress in relation to 54 different sites around the country included in the Affordable Housing Initiative.
The Government proposes to build more than 6,000 homes on these sites. A further 1,500 homes have been planned for Health Service Executive (HSE) lands around the country, but there had been limited progress on these sites.
Of the 13 State-owned sites, involving upwards of 150 hectares of land, houses have arisen from one location in Dublin city centre.
The Government is committed to obtaining more than 2,000 affordable houses from the land.
However, to date the land has resulted in just 193 houses, which emerged from a land swap with a developer for a State-owned site on Harcourt Terrace last year.
Planning, or the identification of a preferred bidder, is at an advanced stage for a further three sites. The State also hopes to see land swaps on a further five sites, including the Department of Defence's old airfield at Gormanston in Co Meath.
According to the figures, construction is under way in nine of the 41 local authority sites identified in the commitment. These include 290 houses in Cork, and 154 homes in Finglas. A further 100 houses are being built in Waterford. Yesterday, Ms Shortall said the initiative had not resulted in the promised increase.
"It's been a dismal performance," she said. "Under Sustaining Progress, there was a commitment on 10,000 extra affordable homes, which held out hope to people that they would get homes, but these have yet to materialise."
She said the social partnership process had "failed" to deliver on its affordable housing promise, and that the current talks on a successor to Sustaining Progress should take this into account.
Mr Ahern rejected this, however, and said the agreement had placed no time limit on delivering the new homes. "Anyone will tell you that it takes on average four years to see any substantial progress on a housing development," he said, adding that progress was being made on all of the sites which would result in more than 10,000 new homes.
He said that more than 1,600 of the 10,000 homes had already been provided. Mr Ahern added that the Sustaining Progress programme was one of four affordable housing programmes, which delivered 2,800 homes last year.