Aoife Watters joined Respond as CEO in April 2025
Reflections of a new CEO
Aoife Watters shares her early experiences at Respond and reveals her vision for the organisation’s future
GOVERNANCE
Aoife Watters
Chief Executive, Respond
Aoife Watters
Chief Executive, Respond
Issue 80 | October 2025
When I stepped into the role of chief executive at Respond earlier this year, I was not looking for a change. I was very happy in my previous position and had not been seeking out new opportunities. So why Respond?
Three things drew me here: the values, the impact, and the team.
Respond is an organisation that lives its values. Long before I joined, I had watched from the outside and had been struck by the consistency between what Respond said and what it did. Meeting staff and visiting projects confirmed this. You could feel the values in how people spoke, how they approached their work, and how tenants and service users described their experience.
Those values align with my own. This is not only about delivering homes – though that is of course vital – it is about building communities where people feel they belong. Our guiding principles – social justice and a right to a home – act as a compass for decisions and priorities, shaping the everyday lives of thousands of tenants and service users.
Beyond bricks and mortar
Having worked for many years in homelessness services, I know the importance of urgent responses. But the long-term solution lies in increasing supply at scale. Respond focuses on being construction-led, genuinely adding to housing stock, while ensuring the homes we provide go beyond bricks and mortar.
What sets Respond apart is our focus on tenant experience. Secure, good-quality housing provides the foundation, but it is how people feel about living there that turns a house into a home. Our aim is strong, connected communities.
Our 95% tenant satisfaction rate tells us that tenants value both the quality of their homes and the relationships we build with them. That is achieved through everyday experiences – ease of communication, responsiveness when things go wrong, opportunities to connect with neighbours, and a genuine sense of being heard.
Respond has built a unique mix of professional expertise across development, services, compliance, public affairs and more. The calibre of people here is extraordinary – deeply committed and highly skilled. Few housing organisations have such breadth, and it gives me real confidence in what we can achieve.
Since taking up the role, what has struck me most is the practice that comes from the ground up. Watching colleagues interact with tenants and service users, seeing their passion and care, has been inspiring. It has also sharpened my sense of responsibility as CEO: to build on these strengths in a sustainable way.
“Secure, good-quality housing provides the foundation, but it is how people feel about living there that turns a house into a home. Our aim is strong, connected communities.”
The Taoiseach Micheál Martin (third from right) opens 69 new social homes and breaks ground on 149 cost rental homes at Respond's Jacob's Island development in Cork
Scaling up, smartly
Approved Housing Bodies are now among the most effective providers of social and affordable homes, having delivered more than half of the Ireland’s new homes in 2024. Respond alone commenced several major mixed-tenure schemes providing social and cost rental homes, including Airton Road (502 homes), Pipers Square (590 homes), Clonburris (318 homes), and Griffin Point (597 homes). We also broke ground on Rathborne, our largest development to date, which will deliver 725 homes.
Scaling up means more than building faster. It requires well-designed, sustainable communities in the right locations – close to transport, jobs and services. As a lifelong landlord, Respond is structured to make higher-density housing work for decades, with estate management, tenant engagement and community development built in. But for these places to truly succeed, we also need to fund the infrastructure of community life: crèches, community rooms, play areas, shared spaces and on-site staffing.
Engagement with stakeholders – government, local authorities, funders, communities – will be key. Over these first months I have focused on consolidating relationships and deepening collaboration with colleagues in the Housing Alliance and Irish Council for Social Housing. Housing for All has set a clear direction, and Respond strongly welcomed that ambition. We now eagerly await the new housing plan, which is due soon. We are keen to play our role as trusted delivery partners working with our statutory partners. For it to succeed, organisations like ours must be fully empowered to deliver. We are the specialists, and we stand ready to scale up.
of Ireland's new homes in 2024 were delivered by Approved Housing Bodies
number of homes being developed by Respond across five mixed-tenure sites
Housing Commission recommends social and affordable housing should be increased to 20% of overall stock
Building the next chapter
As we look ahead, Respond is entering its next phase. We have the teams, the pipeline and the partnerships in place to keep delivering at pace.
We are in the midst of an era-defining housing and a homelessness crisis. We welcome the Government’s reiterated commitment to continue to accelerate the delivery of social and affordable homes – critical after decades of underinvestment.
While political parties differ in the policies to addressing the housing crisis, there is overwhelming agreement on the Housing Commission’s recommendation to increase social and affordable housing to 20% of overall stock. This will help stabilise the market.
Respond is confident we can continue to play an enhanced role, adding to overall housing stock and alleviating pressure.
My vision as CEO is to ensure we do this in a way that is ambitious and grounded: ambitious in scale and scope, grounded in evidence, values, and the lived experience of tenants and service users.
It is a privilege to lead Respond at this moment. My early experiences have only deepened my belief that we are uniquely placed to help bridge Ireland’s housing gap and to do so in a way that truly adds value to people’s lives. That is the challenge. And that is also the opportunity.
“We are in the midst of an era-defining housing and a homelessness crisis. We welcome the Government’s reiterated commitment to continue to accelerate the delivery of social and affordable homes.”
