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Ireland is building more apartments than ever but failing to meet home building targets

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Ireland is building more apartments than ever but failing to meet home building targets

January 28
15:00 2022
A view of a construction cranes over a construction site in Dublin’s Docklands (Getty)

A quarter of all new homes completed in Ireland in 2021 were apartments according to new data from the Central Statistics Office (CSO). This is the highest proportion ever recorded and an increase of 30 per cent from 2020.

In total 20,433 new-builds were finished in 2021, almost the same number as in 2020.

This is one third below the government’s estimate that 33,000 new homes will need to be provided each year between 2021 and 2030 to meet Ireland’s housing needs.

It is also less than half the number that consultants EY think is needed to meet “latent” demand “due to years of undersupply, inward migration and evolving demographics”.

Rory Hearne, Assistant Professor Social Policy at Maynooth University, told Buzz the shortfall illustrated the scale of the housing crisis.

“Just in the last three years we have a deficit of 36,000 homes,” Hearne said. “So next year, we would need to be building 69,000 homes if we were to build for the housing need plus the deficit of just the last three years.”

He added another “major issue is a lot of the new build homes are being bought up by investor funds as build/buy to rent. These are being rented out at unaffordable rents, and lock out home buyers, and add to wider housing pressure”.

Meanwhile, the figures show new builds are continuing to shrink in size. The average new home is now just 79 per cent of the average size in 2016. The CSO said this was driven by the increasing number of apartments as well as smaller homes overall.

Source: CSO

Regional differences

Most new homes continue to be built in Dublin and the surrounding commuter belt areas. Overall more than 80 per cent of completions were in urban areas, the highest proportion in over a decade.

More than three-quarters of the 5,107 new flats were constructed in Dublin. Apartments made up 64 per cent of all new homes in the county.

Dublin also had the largest number of new homes overall, followed by Kildare and Meath.

Out of all Local Electoral Areas (LEAs), Blanchardstown-Mulhuddart saw the most new dwellings added at 712, followed by Howth-Malahide with 491. Maynooth in Kildare followed, with 457 new homes.

Meanwhile, more than a thousand new apartments were constructed in Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown.

The Mid-West region, made up of Clare, Tipperary and Limerick, had the biggest percentage increase in the country: 11 per cent more new homes were built there than during 2020. The South-West countries of Cork and Kerry saw a sharp decline of 12 per cent.

Housing for All

The government published an update to its Housing for All strategy yesterday, with Taoiseach Micheál Martin saying it had made “significant progress” towards increasing supply, adding that the housing crisis will “not be solved in one year”.

“When we launched Housing for All, we said there would be a strong focus on delivery across Government. Increasing the supply of homes is our top priority, and I’m happy to report that we’ve made good progress in building new homes and reform of our housing system.”

However others disagreed pointing out no new affordable homes – a key pillar of the strategy – were completed during 2021.

Quick recovery

Overall nearly the same number of new builds were completed in 2021 as in 2020 with just a 0.5 per cent decline. The figures are also lower than in 2019 when a total of 21,087 new homes were built.

However, the rate of building is thought to have rebounded quickly from the pandemic.

The Banking and Payments Federation of Ireland found in a report last September that more new homes had been started between June 2020 and June 2021 than at any time before.

The overall new home figures do not include student accommodation. According to the CSO there has been “a significant level of construction output” in this sector with 1,028 new student beds added in just the last three months of 2021.

Source BUZZ

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