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HOUSING WAS ONE of the Government’s biggest focuses when it announced Budget 2025 this week, with €6 billion allocated to help alleviate the many problems in the sector.
The issue will be a hot topic in the upcoming general election, when the Government’s record on housing over the past four years will come under severe scrutiny.
Senior officials, including Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien, are already pointing to wins for the Government. This week, he suggested that more homes are now being built in Ireland than anywhere else in Europe – but is he right?
Darragh O’Brien claimed this week that Ireland is the top country in Europe when it comes to building homes.
Speaking at the Department of Housing’s post-Budget press conference on 1 October, the Minister said:
“Every single year, in every single budget, we’ve built on the year previous. And this is clear to see in the number of homes that we’re delivering.
“From 20,000 homes in 2020, to what we estimate will be close to 40,000 homes in 2024 – a near doubling of the housing output.
“We’ve managed to do this despite a global pandemic, despite a brutal war in Ukraine, and all the associated challenges that came with it.
“We’re the top country in Europe for housing construction.”
After the press conference, The Journal asked the Department of Housing for evidence of O’Brien’s claim.
A spokesperson told us that the Minister’s figures were based on a report published in June by Euroconstruct, an independent group that forecasts how many homes will be built in a given year in 19 European countries.
The report says that Ireland is currently building more homes than the 18 other countries that feature in the report as a percentage of population.
“Housing completions per 1,000 population in Ireland – at 6.9 in 2024 and 7.7 in 2025 - are projected to be the strongest among the 19 Euroconstruct European countries”, a Department spokesperson said.
“This pace of new housing growth in Ireland is the fastest in Europe when measured on a per-population basis.”
There are a number of issues with using these figures to claim Ireland is the top country in Europe when it comes to building new homes.
The main one is that the data is based on population, rather than as an outright figure, which is a qualifier that significantly alters O’Brien’s original claim.
Ireland has a low population compared to other European countries for historical reasons (including as a consequence of the Great Famine in the mid-19th century).
In fact, it has the lowest population of all 19 countries in the Euroconstruct network, which includes Austria, Belgium, Czechia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.
Statistically, the construction of one house in Ireland is therefore worth more than in any of the other 18 countries when a per capita measurement is applied.
This is because 1/5,149,139 (ie one house per Ireland’s official population) is a bigger number than 1/67,596,281 (ie one house per the UK’s official population).
As well as this, the report by Euroconstruct is also just a projection of figures in 2024 and 2025; but the number of homes built in both of those years has not yet been finalised.
One cannot say that Ireland is the top country in Europe for the construction of homes, based on construction activity that hasn’t occurred yet (as accurate as the projection may turn out to be).
Data shows that most countries in the Euroconstruct network built more homes than Ireland in 2022 or 2023 (depending on which year the other 18 countries posted their most up-to-date statistics).
The official statistics agencies of Austria, Spain and Switzerland show that all three countries built more homes than Ireland did in 2022, according to the most recent figures available.
And data from agencies for Czechia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany The Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, and The UK all show they built more homes than Ireland did in 2023.
In that same year, just four countries built fewer homes than Ireland: Hungary, Norway, Portugal and Slovakia.
It was only possible to get data on building permits (applications for planning permission), rather than on the number of completed homes, for two other countries.
Data from Belgium’s official statistics agency, which only discloses the number of instances where people apply for planning permission in a given year, showed that there were 25,478 applications there in 2023 compared to 41,225 in Ireland last year.
Italy’s country’s official statistics agency reported 55,500 new building permits were granted in 2023, around 14,000 more applications than Ireland last year.
What all of these figures show is that Ireland is in the bottom half when compared to its European counterparts on the number of homes completed outright, as opposed to housing completions by 1,000 population.
Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien claimed that Ireland is now “the top country in Europe” when it comes to the construction of new homes.
His claim was based on figures by a group called Euroconstruct, which compared Ireland’s projected level of housing construction this year and in 2025 with 18 other countries.
Crucially, this comparison was done on a per capita basis – which favours Ireland as the least-populated country in the group – rather than looking at outright figures.
Furthermore, as a projection, it is not based on the number of homes that have actually been constructed.
When the number of homes completed in Ireland in 2022 and 2023 is compared with the other 18 countries, it’s possible to see that outright figures put us towards the bottom of the table.
Only four of the 18 countries in the Euroconstruct group – Hungary, Norway, Portugal and Slovakia – built fewer homes than Ireland in the most recent comparable year.
It was also only possible to compare applications for planning permission for two other countries, with one of those – Belgium – having fewer applications last year compared to Ireland.
We therefore rate Darragh O’Brien’s claim that Ireland is “the top country in Europe” for housing construction as MISLEADING. As per our verdict guide, this means the claim either intentionally or unintentionally misleads readers.
The Journal’s FactCheck is a signatory to the International Fact-Checking Network’s Code of Principles. You can read it here. For information on how FactCheck works, what the verdicts mean, and how you can take part, check out our Reader’s Guide here. You can read about the team of editors and reporters who work on the factchecks here.
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