Bureaucratic blocks on housing development are making it impossible to build much-needed homes.
That's the view of West Belfast's top builder Aidan Flynn who was responding to this week's Andersonstown News-North Belfast News editorial blasting roadblocks erected by government bodies which have resulted in a decline in the number of new houses being built.
We revealed that just 5,848 houses were completed in 2025, a fall of over 70 from the previous year even though the Executive is supposedly ramping up new-builds in response to the housing crisis.
"The numbers don’t lie," says Aidan Flynn of Flynn Construction in Poleglass. "Northern Ireland has deliberately broken housebuilding. In 2005, Northern Ireland started over 15,000 new homes. In 2025, we can’t even scrape 6,000."
Branding the decline on "institutional sabotage playing out over 20 years", the veteran construction chief accused political leaders and civil servants of "doing the exact opposite of what is required".
BLISTERING ATTACK ON BUREAUCRACY: Aidan Flynn
"Those in charge have failed—repeatedly and predictably—to fix a system they know does not work," he said. "NI Water is throttling development at source, holding viable, fundable schemes hostage through blanket constraints and endless rejections."
Planning, he charges, is not much better. "The NI planning system is not just slow—it is fundamentally unfit for purpose, risk‑averse to the point of paralysis and hostile to delivery."
And he had brickbats too for the construction sector. "The Construction Industry Training Board has failed to replenish the workforce, presiding over a worsening skills shortage while demand explodes," said Aidan.
"The outcome is not abstract policy failure. It is real and damaging: Homes not built; Prices driven higher; Investors walking away; Young people locked out of the housing market; Economic growth capped by design."
Flynn, said Aidan, has one planning application for housing in North Belfast — where housing need is the most extreme in the North — logjammed in the planning process for three years.
CRISIS: Housing Stats over the past two decades
For the Flynn CEO, the message to builders and investors from the very top of government to the frontline civil servant is, "don't bother, don't invest, don't build".
He adds: "This is not how a serious economy behaves. So let’s stop pretending everything is fine and ask the blunt question: Is Northern Ireland actually open for business— or are we watching a managed decline dressed up as regulation?"
