Housing commencement notices up 42.5% in October

The construction of 2,624 homes commenced this October, which was 42.5 per cent higher than the number of commencements in the same month last year, new figures from the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage show.

The strong uptick in commencement notices seen throughout this year continued last month, it said. The construction of 26,547 homes got underway in the first ten months of 2023. This represents a 16.6 per cent increase on the same period last year, when the figure stood at 22,760.

Some 15,500 of the total number of homes commenced are located in the greater Dublin area. Some 3,710 of these were in these were in the area covered by Dublin City Council, with 2,947 in the South Dublin County Council area.

A commencement notice is a notification to a building control authority that a person intends to carry out either works or a material change of use to which building regulations apply. They are seen as a useful measure of housing activity.

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Last month the local authority with the highest number of new housing units commencing was South Dublin County, with 476. This was followed by Dublin City with 315 and Meath County with 296.

Just seven new homes commenced in Laois and Longford last month, while there were only three commencements in Roscommon and just two in Sligo.

Some 29,957 new homes were commenced in the State in 2022, according to the department’s figures, with separate data from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) pointing to a similar level of housing completions last year.

The Government estimated in its Housing For All plan, published in 2021, that 33,000 new homes would be required each year up to 2030. With two months remaining in 2023, commencement notices in respect of 6,453 homes will need to be received to achieve this target.