Nearly 33,000 homes delivered last year, uncertainty remains over social and affordable targets

LAST UPDATE | 25 Jan 2024

NEW FIGURES FROM the Central Statistics Office today show 32,695 homes were delivered in 2023 – a 10% increase on 2022.

The number of apartments completed in 2023 was 11,642, up 28% on the year before.

The latest Housing for All update launched today states the figure of the homes delivered is the largest annual delivery in 15 years. 

While government is expecting a “strong delivery” in its social and affordable home delivery, the government housing update today does not state if social and affordable housing targets were reached last year. 

The government had set out to build 9,100 social homes and 5,500 affordable and cost-rental homes in 2023 in its housing plan.

Referencing the figures in the Dáil today, Micheál Martin said the government has gained “momentum” in housing, “but we need to do more”.

He said the Help to Buy and First Home schemes mean the number of people buying for the first time has gone “way up” – around 500 each week.

“We are going in the right direction,” Martin said, adding that the government hopes to for the figures to be “higher again” in 2024.

In the last three months of 2023, there were 15,505 government scheme homes completed, up 2.4% on 2022, while 5,548 single dwellings were completed.

Over half of all homes built were in Dublin or the Mid-East, in counties Kildare, Louth, Meath, and Wicklow. Of all completions in Dublin in 2023, some 71.9% were apartments.

More than 30,500 First-Time Buyers were approved for a mortgage in the 12 months to November 2023.

Vacant and derelict homes are also coming back into use with just over 3,000 Vacant Property Refurbishment Grant applications approved last year.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said the government wants everyone to have a secure home and to have the opportunity to become a homeowner. 

“We are now really stepping up home building each year, with a pipeline of well-built private, social, affordable and cost rental homes. We can see it on the ground, with new homes and apartments being built all over the country. We also see that dereliction is down and lots of student housing is being built. These are not included in today’s figures,” he said. 

He added that 500 first-time buyers are drawing down their mortgage each week. 

Varadkar told reporters today that this is “highest level of first-time buyer activity since I was in my twenties”. 

“Of course, I’m very aware that for a lot of people, none of this good news matters,” Varadkar said at a press briefing this afternoon, adding that “far too many people are paying rents that are far too high for far too long”.

There is a significant cohort of people earning too much to be eligible for social housing, but too little to take advantage of first time buyer schemes, the Dáil heard today.

At leaders’ questions, Independent Clare TD Michael McNamara highlighted the people “caught in the middle”, many of whom are emigrating after finishing third-level.

“It would be churlish not to acknowledge that there has been a big increase in housing,” he said.

“But there’s a cohort that are caught in the middle and, it seems to me, are not being helped.”

In Clare, to be eligible for social housing, a single person can’t earn more than €35,000, McNamara said, while the lowest cost of any affordable housing scheme is around €55,000.

This, he explained, leaves many workers, such as early-career teachers and nurses, “with little hope of getting a home”.

“We worry a lot about people emigrating, and there are a variety of reasons why people emigrate … but one of the reasons young people [leave] is because they can’t realistically hope to buy a house on the levels they start at, having completed their education.”

With reporting by Christina Finn