Taoiseach Micheál Martin has denied that housing commencement numbers are going in the wrong direction, after figures revealed that the number of commencement notices for the first half of the year was a fraction of the commencements in the same period last year and the year previous.
Speaking this afternoon in Cork, Mr Martin said a fall-off in housing commencements was always anticipated in the first six months of this year, given that a waiver on levies for developers had ceased at the end of last year.
Figures from the Department of Housing show 1,356 housing commencement notices were issued in June, bringing the total number of notices issued so far this year to 6,325.
That compares with 34,581 commencement notices issued for the first six months of last year, when a waiver on development levies was in place.
The 6,325 figure is less than half what it was for the six months from January to June in 2023 and 2022.
Watch: ‘We anticipated this fall off’ in housing commencements, says Taoiseach
Asked if he was concerned that the figures were heading in the wrong direction, Mr Martin said: “I don’t think that’s fair, because you must look at the context where last year was a record year of 33,000, because of the waiving of development levies, and that is the context in which one must look at this.
“We expected a fall-off this year, given the record numbers that came in last year. The year before was 15,000, last year 33,000.”
Mr Martin said that housing completions were up in the first quarter of this year.
He also said the Government had taken significant measures that were “foundational steps” for future growth in house building.
“There are thousands and thousands of houses now in the pipeline,” Mr Martin said.
“We do need to unblock some of those and that’s why the National Development Plan is particularly important in enabling the unblocking of some projects that are already about to happen or in the pipeline itself, so we are focused really in terms of the initiatives we have taken to attract further private sector investment into the construction industry, which is critical, but also in maintaining public sector investment.
Mr Martin insisted that the fall-off in housing commencements had been anticipated by Government in the first six months of this year, given what he described as the “extraordinary” number of commencements over the last two years.
“Between 2023 and 2024, you are looking at close to 50,000 commencements so if we get those now completed, in addition to those already in the pipeline, I think you will have a significant number of houses completed and what will be key next year and the years ahead is to get more private sector construction, particularly in apartments.
“We need to really increase the level of apartment building. There are plenty planning permissions out there.
“The planning framework will enable councils to zone much more land, which is also going to be critical for house building into the future.”
Asked if he was concerned about the scale of the drop in the number of housing commencement notices issued in the first six months of this year, Mr Martin said his focus was on increasing the number of housing completions per year from 33,000 to 50,000 per year.
“We have a lot of commencements, we have a lot of planning permissions granted. The issue is how we turn those into buildings,” he said.
Social Democrats TD Rory Hearne said said the apparent collapse in housing commencement notices was “deeply disappointing”.
“What we’ve seen is essentially since the election in November last year, a complete fall in the number of commencements of new homes. And this is when developers, builders put in that they’re actually starting a home. But of course, it doesn’t actually mean that homes are being completed, and that’s the real difference where we’re seeing the figures.
He said in the run-up to last November’s election there was a “huge increase in commencement numbers, builders, developers taking advantage of a waiver that the government offered”.
He said this had distorted what the government said would be the housing delivery numbers, compared to what was actually delivered.
“I have argued that the Government had misled the public in the election, claiming that 40,000 homes were going to be built last year, we saw just over 30,000 this year, looks like a similar number next year again.
“There’s real questions to be asked. Did the Government know that when it introduced this waiver system, that essentially, it was going to really distort the number of housing units being delivered, and that really it was about trying to influence the election and not actually show what number of homes were going to be delivered.
He said commencement figures were “really unreliable” in terms of giving an indication of what is actually happening in the housing market.
