A former member of the Irish Housing Commission has said that building 93,000 homes a year to meet demand between now and 2031 is "not immediately doable".
A report published by Davy Stockbrokers last week forecasted that the housing shortfall is now 230,000 homes, on the basis of the estimate that the population will reach six million by 2031.
Speaking on RTÉ's Today with Claire Byrne programme, Michael O’Flynn, Chairperson and CEO of the O'Flynn Group, said that in his experience, the "crisis" which denies people from buying a home has "never been worse".
"This problem was identified by many people, including myself, that we were grossly underestimating what was needed, and we had quite a debate in the Housing Commission," he said.
"The reality is, we are two to three years into this shortfall of demand and I'm astounded to hear people talking about that the various reports that they relied upon," he added.
Mr O’Flynn said that some of the reports did not cater for deficit or pent up demand.
He described the Davy figures as "frightening but correct", adding that emergency measures must be taken.
"You need zoning, you need infrastructure, you need it to be available, you need viability - we need a lot of subsidisation; and we need funding, we have a funding issue," he stated.
He added that this can be fixed really quickly.
"Those emergency measures might involve the State infrastructural bodies, the local authorities, the planning regulator and the industry to come together and figure out how can an emergency system perhaps bypass zoning, but only on the basis that there is a group appointed by the Government to look, and the local authorities sign off on it," he said.
He also said that there is an opportunity here to "repurpose labour towards housing".
"In the past, we've attracted in people from outside the country, we now need to gear up on apprentices. When I hear it labour shortages being used as a reason for not having the right target for delivery, I despair," he said.
