Fact check: Ireland needs record housebuilding final quarter to hit 2024 target

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Published: Wed 6 Nov 2024, 5:59 PM

Last updated: Wed 6 Nov 2024, 6:20 PM

By Stephen Wood, PA

Housing is expected to be a major issue in the coming Irish general election, with a number of claims being made around the incumbent Government’s targets and record on delivering new homes.

The full scope of housebuilding in 2024 will not be known until the end of the year but the current stated targets and statistics for new homes up to the end of September are available for analysis.

The Government has set up a programme called Housing For All to run until 2030 to address Irish housing needs, including the provision of new housing.

The most recent progress report, published midway through 2024, notes in its introduction the target for this calendar year is 33,450 new homes. This remains the same from a progress report published after the first quarter of the year.

Government ministers have repeatedly claimed that housebuilding will exceed the official target. Giving a speech in August, Taoiseach Simon Harris said: “This year, we will exceed our housing targets with almost 40,000 homes built.”

Tánaiste Micheal Martin said on social media the country is “coming close to 40,000 being built a year” – although this is a generalised statistic rather than necessarily referencing 2024.

In another social media post, Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien said a figure of “almost 40,000” would be delivered in 2024 and compared this with what he said where the 20,000 homes built in 2020 when the current coalition took power.

The total built in 2020 was 20,676, which is more usually rounded up to 21,000, but it does show the Irish Government has increased housebuilding since.

This suggested figure of 40,000 homes in 2024 has been questioned by the Social Democrats, independent election candidates and Sinn Féin’s finance spokesman Pearse Doherty during a Dáil debate on October 24th.

Mr O’Brien rejected Mr Doherty’s figure and reiterated the official target of 33,450 homes in 2024. He also added what he said was a “confident” prediction that the number of new homes “will be (in) the high-30,000s to low-40,000s this year”.

In June 2024, the Euroconstruct research network and EY released a forecast that predicted housing completions in Ireland would be “the strongest among 19 European countries” and reach 36,000 by the end of 2024. This prediction was made before housebuilding figures from the Central Statistics Office (see below) were made available beyond the first quarter of the year.

Full figures for housebuilding – known as new dwelling completions – in 2024 will not be available until next year, as they are released quarterly by the Central Statistics Office (CSO). Across the first three quarters of 2024 the data shows 5,841 completions in Q1, with 6,884 in Q2 and 8,939 in Q3 – a total of 21,664 in the first nine months of 2024.

This compares with 22,521 new dwelling completions in the first three quarters of 2023, as shown in the CSO statistics.

In addition to completed homes, the Government also collects data on the start of residential construction. The Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage most recently published data showing that construction was started on 49,007 homes in the first nine months of the year. This is significantly higher than the number of commencements in all of 2023, which was recorded as 32,801.

In the Dáil debate of October 24th, Sinn Féin’s Mr Doherty said that given the shortfall between the homes so far delivered and the stated ambition of 40,000, it was “not achievable” and “not credible” to reach the Government’s goal in the remaining quarter (October to December) of 2024. Mr O’Brien responded: “The highest level of delivery last year and in previous years was in the last quarter.”

The CSO’s series of statistics on new dwelling completions date back to 2011, a year when the first quarter had a higher number of completions than any other by a margin of 84, for all house types.

In every year since, the highest number of dwelling completions has been recorded in the fourth quarter, varying from a margin of 212 at the lowest (in 2015, from a total of 2,245) and 2,279 at most (in 2020, from a total of 7,316).

The overall figure for completions in the last quarter of 2023 was 10,223. If this figure were to be repeated in 2024, that would bring the year’s housebuilding total to 31,887, narrowly missing the Housing For All target of 33,450.

If the fourth quarter of 2024 is a record for completions, as the Housing Minister claimed, the Government could hit that target. To get close to 40,000 would require a major increase from the 2023 figures.

Gov.ie – Housing for All – a New Housing Plan for Ireland (archived)

Housing for All Q2 2024 Progress Report (archived)

Housing for All Q1 2024 Progress Report (archived)

Speech of An Taoiseach Simon Harris T.D., Béal na Bláth Commemoration – Fine Gael (archived)

Micheal Martin post on X (archived post and video)

Darragh O’Brien TD post on LinkedIn (archived and video)

New Dwelling Completions Q4 2020 – CSO – Central Statistics Office (archived)

Central Bank rubbishes Taoiseach’s 40,000 homes claim – Social Democrats (archived)

Rob Carry post on X (archived)

Gov.ie – Record number of new homes commenced in 2023 (archived)

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí – Leaders’ Questions – Dáil Éireann (33rd Dáil) – Thursday, 24 Oct 2024 – Houses of the Oireachtas (archived)

Irish housing completions forecast to be strongest among 19 European countries: EY-Euroconstruct | EY Ireland (archived)