The Department of Finance housing unit said in October that new home completions for 2024 were likely to be “similar or below” the 2023 total, weeks before government candidates fought the election saying a big rise was coming by the end of the year.
Repeated campaign claims that 40,000 new homes would be delivered last year proved wrong when official data published last January showed annual output dropped to 30,330 homes from 32,525 in 2023.
The figures led the Opposition to accuse Government leaders of misleading voters by making bullish forecasts about increased housing delivery before the November 29th election.
After the disclosure that Department of Housing officials questioned the rate of delivery in August, Department of Finance records add to a growing body of evidence on the extent of doubt about housing targets in official circles.
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A new document has come to light showing an official in the Department of Finance’s housing unit indicated in October that a rise in annual output was unlikely last year.
The document was sent to the department’s economics division after the Central Statistics Office released housing output figures for the third quarter of the year. That was almost a fortnight before another department document – separately released last week to Sinn Féin TD Pearse Doherty – drew the same conclusion about last year’s output in a submission to then minister for finance Jack Chambers.
“The figures to date are broadly line with recent revisions to completions forecasts from the Central Bank for 2024, which point to housing output similar or slightly below last year,” said the housing unit email of October 24th.
The Central Bank in September said output would drop to 32,000 but government figures continued to insist 40,000 new homes would be built.
Finance officials noted the 32,000 projection from the bank. Completions were down 8.8 per cent in the first half of 2024, but housing starts rose above 51,000 in the 12 months to June.
However, a September 17th note by Department of Finance officials said “the timing of the translation” of such commencements into completions remained uncertain and was “assumed to occur in 2025 and 2026″.
The records were released under the Freedom of Information Act.
A spokesman for Mr Chambers, now Minister for Public Expenditure, described the October file as “internal correspondence between officials” preparing the Minister’s November update.
“This internal email contains the same wording as the November housing update,” said the spokesman. “The update was based on CSO data that is in the public domain and also referenced previous Central Bank projections. This data presented was not new and the Minister was already aware of these inputs from the CSO and the Central Bank.”
