Housing Ireland magazine
Housing for All: ‘Strong pipeline’ for 2022 Early indicators “suggest a strong pipeline of housing for 2022”, although the construction industry’s capacity to exceed the 20 per cent increase needed to meet Housing for All targets for 2022 remains to be seen. As the first step in achieving Housing for All’s headline target of an average of 33,000 homes per year in the period 2022-2030, 24,600 homes are expected to be delivered in 2022, which would require an increase of 20.16 per cent from 2021, when 20,433 new homes were completed. Such an increase is historically precedented, with yearly increases as high as 45.51 per cent recorded in the 2010s, although questions remain surrounding the construction industry’s capacity to increase further. 2021’s overall figures show a decrease of 41 houses from the year previous and a decrease of 574 from 2019, the last recorded year unaffected by Covid-19 lockdowns. The report also reveals that seven actions due for implementation in Q4 2021 were carried into Q1 2022 to make a total of 20 actions due for the quarter, 12 (60 per cent) of which were successfully implemented. Overall successful implementation for the plan thus far stands at 70 per cent.
New dwelling completions The completion of 24,600 in 2022 new dwellings is committed to as the beginning of the delivery of 312,750 homes from 2022-2030. To achieve the necessary 20.16 per cent increase, a total of an extra 4,127 homes must be completed. In the decade 2011-2021, total increases in dwelling completions were recorded six times, the largest of which were recorded consecutively in 2017, 2018, and 2019, showing that the Irish construction industry had been on track for the type of delivery envisioned within the plan. 12
In 2017, a 45.51 per cent increase from 9,842 completions to 14,321 was recorded; this momentum was then carried into 2018, when a 24.98 per cent increase was recorded for a total of 17,899 completions; 2019 then saw an increase of 17.59 per cent and the breaching of the 20,000 mark for completions, with 21,047 new dwellings completed. This means that while the increases in construction numbers needed to reach the targets set out in Housing for All will be difficult to achieve, such an uptick would not be unprecedented. The hope for both government and the construction industry that the decreases recorded since then are simply a case of the long-term effect of the Covid pandemic and its lockdowns rather than the sign of an industry that has reached its capacity ceiling. The progress report on the implementation of Housing for All for Q1 2022 issued by the Government shows there to have been commencement notices received for 4,200 new homes in the first two months of 2022; with 42,991 homes granted planning permission and 30,724 new houses commencing construction in
