FEWER THAN 8,500 houses were built in Ireland last year with nearly 2,000 fewer houses constructed in the country than 2011, according to new figures from the Construction Industry Federation.
The CIF is predicting another reduction in house construction this year with figures for last year showing that a total of 8,488 homes were built in Ireland last year, 1,992 or 19 per cent fewer than in 2011.
The largest number of house completions last year was in Dublin (1,266 units built). It was followed by Cork (1,213) and Galway (499) with big falls in house construction in Kilkenny, Fingal in Dublin, Tipperary, Carlow and Mayo.
Over 60 per cent of the houses built last year – 5,162 – were individual units with 27 per cent or 2,333 accounting for housing scheme units, and 993 or 11.7 per cent of houses constructed being apartments.
There were falls in house construction in every county in the country last year except for Louth, Longford and Sligo.
The CIF estimates that between 15,000 and 20,000 new homes need to be built every year to meet future demand citing figures from the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI).
“Unfortunately it looks like we will see another slight reduction in house building in 2013,” CIF director general Tom Parlon said.
“The level of commencements for the first eleven months of 2012 were down by 8 per cent on the same period for the year before. A drop in the number of new builds commencing leads to a fall in the number of completions.
“We are hearing about work beginning on a number of new or housing developments or an expansion of existing projects so that may lead to an increase in completions for the latter half of 2013.
“But overall the low commencement rate for 2012 has led us to forecast another drop in housing units built during the coming year.”
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