Almost 80,000 new homes will be built in the State over the next two years but the 2024 total will fall short of Government forecasts, one expert says.
The Republic will need 52,000 new dwellings a year to get on top of its long-running housing crisis, according to the Central Bank of Ireland, while Government pledges run to 50,000 annually.
A report published on Monday predicts that builders will have completed 32,000 new homes by the end of this year, short of the “almost 40,000″ promised by outgoing Fine Gael Taoiseach Simon Harris in August.
Next year the industry could build 38,000 homes with the figure rising to 40,000 in 2026, says EY-Euroconstruct, an independent network of experts that tracks construction trends in 19 European countries.
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Mr Harris also pledged that the Coalition would facilitate the construction of 50,000 new homes annually over five years to meet the likely needs of a growing population.
Politicians highlighted the Republic’s decade-old housing crisis as a key issue for voters in last month’s general election, while all parties that contested the poll made ambitious pledges for hew home building.
It is widely expected that whatever coalition emerges from talks on forming the next government, that administration will commit to solving the problem.
However, according to economist Annette Hughes, a director at accountants EY Advisory and a member of Euroconstruct, the Republic leads Europe in terms of the number of new homes it is building per head of population.
She noted that at a time when house building was stalling right across Europe the Republic’s performance “is particularly notable and has been driven by a number of factors”.
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Ms Hughes said these included policies geared at accelerating the construction of new homes and cutting building costs, along with the shifting of some capacity from commercial to residential construction.
She acknowledged that this year’s likely total of 32,000 new homes was short of the 36,000 that Euroconstruct forecasted last June.
Funding, labour shortages and questions over the viability of individual projects delayed some developments, she added.
“Many of these issues are being addressed, with the temporary waiver of development contributions leading to a significant surge in commencements that we expect to feed into completions in 2025 and 2026,” said Ms Hughes.
The wider building industry faces a more mixed outlook, Ms Hughes cautioned, as inflation continues to increase projects’ costs and companies grapple with an ongoing labour shortage.
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