The Department of Housing says the total number of commencements in the year to date is 6,325. At the same point last year, the figure stood at 34,581, but this was artificially inflated because developers were rushing to avail of a waiver on water-connection charges and development levies.
A fairer comparison would be with the first six months of 2023, when 15,561 commencement notices were filed, or with January to June 2022, when 14,149 housing starts were notified by builders.
The Department of Housing figures are just the latest indictor that there has been a slowdown in housing construction this year.
Eoin Ó Broin, the Sinn Féin housing spokesman, said that other than the Covid year of 2020, commencement rates have not been this low since 2016.
“That has been the trend now over the last three or four quarters. These are historic low commencements over the last decade,” he said.
“What that means is not only is the Government not going to reach its target of building 41,000 homes this year, there is a real possibility that both this year and next year the total number of homes could be fewer than last year. And that is obviously very concerning.”
Mr Ó Broin said that shortfalls in housing output are on the public sector side, with social and affordable homes way behind target. But the Government is also lagging behind on new homes to buy on the private market.
“I am talking to a lot of builder/developers, particularly small to medium-sized around the country, and they are really struggling to get finance, planning permissions, utility connections, site servicing. So what this set of data tells us is that for both this year – but crucially for next year – our housing output is on a downward trajectory.
“And that means house prices and rents will continue to rise.”
Due to the waivers last year, a total of over 60,000 commencement notices were filed. Ministers would have been hoping that the focus of the construction industry had turned to completing those houses, which must be finished by December 2026 if the builders are to avail of the waivers.
The Central Statistics Office will have new figures on how many houses were completed in the second quarter of 2025 next Thursday. But the figure for the first quarter was 5,938 dwelling completions, which was only up 2pc on the same period last year.
The Government will need to see a considerable improvement in the second-quarter figures if it is to have any chance of getting close to its declared target of 41,000 completed houses this year.
Housing Minister James Browne has already conceded that the official aim is “not realistic”.
Several independent bodies, such as the Central Bank and the ESRI, are predicting that output will be somewhere between 32,000 and 34,000.
One positive that the Government could take from June’s commencement figures is that 509 of the notices were for apartments, a sector that it is trying to revive. This brings the total number of apartment commencements for the year up to 2,208, which is just over one-third of the total.
source