The Daily Star Ireland
According to the CSO, 30,330 homes were completed in 2024, a 6.7% decrease on 2023. This is in contrast to previous estimates by both government officials and economists, many of whom had projected an increase or similar levels of housing completions as the previous year.
The data points to an apartment construction slump, where only 8,763 completions were observed for 2024, which is a 24% fall from the prior year. Single dwellings further declined 2.2% to 5,367, while housing schemes reported a modest increase of 4.6% to 16,200 units.
The CSO said that in 2024, 53.4% of all housing completions were scheme dwellings, 28.9% were apartments and 17.7% were single homes. More than half of these new homes – 54.3% – were in Dublin or the mid-east, which includes counties Kildare, Louth, Meath and Wicklow.
There were 8,732 homes completed in the fourth quarter of 2024, down 14.5% compared to the same period in 2023.
This represents a stark underperformance against some optimistic predictions made by Government Ministers. The outgoing Taoiseach Simon Harris had claimed last July that targets would be overshoot and almost 40,000 homes would be built, including a record level of social housing since 1975. Last October, the Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien told the Dáil the target in the Housing for All plan for 33,450 homes would be met and exceeded – up to 40,000 completions.
Despite these assurances, the actual figure of 30,330 houses is below the government’s target of 33,000 under the Housing for All strategy. Opposition parties have accused the government of failing to meet its targets. Sinn Féin’s spokesperson on housing, Eoin Ó Broin, said the targets had been too low and the government had chosen to ignore quarterly data showing completions were consistently falling throughout the year.
Ó Broin also pinned the blame on the shortfall in government failure to enact needed reforms to increase the delivery of housing-both public and private. He warned that unless big changes are enacted, the crisis will continue to worsen on the current administration’s watch.
