The head of the Irish Home Builders Association (IHBA) has said he believes the numbers of homes completed in Ireland this year will be fewer than last year.
Ireland missed its 2024 target for housing completions.
The Government-set target under its Housing for All plan was for 33,450 completed homes by 2024. But according to the Central Statistics Office, 30,330 homes were completed last year – a decrease of 6.7% compared with 2023.
Director of Housing and Planning at the Construction Industry Federation (CIF) Conor O’Connell said he expects even fewer homes to be built in 2025.
“Given the statistics around completions last year, the number of planning permissions that are in the system and the significant decline in planning permissions last year, I don’t think most industry observers would say will reach last year’s figures,” Mr O’Connell said.
The Housing for All target for 2025 is 41,000 homes.
Speaking to RTÉ’s Morning Ireland at the annual IHBA conference in Croke Park, Mr O’Connell said the decreasing new-build housing supply is “very concerning”.
“We’re in a crisis situation. And it demands a crisis response,” Mr O’Connell said.
We need your consent to load this rte-player contentWe use rte-player to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences
“Every builder that we speak to at the moment talks about the difficulty of securing planning permission, the difficulty of securing zoned land with infrastructure and the capacity register maps for both ESB networks and for Uisce Éireann are showing 0% capacity in certain high-demand areas,” he said.
“We have a number of problems at the moment around the four main determinants of housing supply, that’s zoning, infrastructure planning and funding.,” he added.
Mr O’Connell called for more funding for utility companies ESB and Irish Water as well as more zoned land and to expedite the planning process.
Last year, more than 60,000 housing commencements were recorded, however Mr O’Connell doubts that they will all be completed by even December of 2026.
“What an awful lot of builders are saying to us when they tried to get their connection to the grid or when they tried to get their connection to the local wastewater treatment plant was there simply wasn’t the capacity there,” he said.
Builders must have completed the housing by 31 December 2026 in order to comply with the development levy waiver scheme.
“They are under significant pressure to deliver,” Mr O’Connell said.
“Time scales for decision making amongst the planning authorities, the local authorities and utility companies are absolutely vital to ensure we can reach that target,” he added.
