Home completions were up 11 per cent in the first half of this year, but commencements remain well below the level needed if the State is to hit its targets for new homes in the years ahead, the Banking & Payments Federation of Ireland has warned.
The Government is targeting about 300,000 new homes to be built between 2025 and 2030. That pace of construction would be well ahead of anything the country has seen in recent years.
“Some 18,974 housing units were commenced during the first seven months of 2026, almost two-and-a-half times the level recorded during the same period in 2025, bringing total commencements to 27,847 units in the 12 months to July,” BPFI chief economist Ali Ugur said.
“While this represents a recovery from the unusually low levels recorded in 2025, it remains well below the more than 50,000 commencements recorded in 2024 and 40,500 in 2025 over the equivalent 12-month period.”
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The BPFI report underlines the difficulties the State faces to hit its targets at present, even if its housing completion forecast for this year of more than 40,000 is ahead of the Central Bank’s projections which were published on Wednesday.
“Planning permissions, a key indicator of future housing supply, continue to signal challenges further up the delivery pipeline,” Ugur said, pointing to Central Statistics Office data showing 8,092 dwelling units were granted planning permission in the first three months of 2026.
Permissions were down about a third in Dublin alone – by far the biggest market in the country, especially for apartments.
“Of the 80,285 permitted residential units across Dublin’s four local authorities at the end of Q2 2026, only 33,623, or 41.9 per cent, had been activated while more than 41,000 approved apartment units had not commenced,” Ugur added.
“The large stock of uncommenced but approved developments, particularly apartment schemes in Dublin, points to growing challenges around project viability, infrastructure provision, and construction capacity,” he said.
