Data gives optimistic view of Irish housing sector that few want to hear

James Browne and his collection of civil servants in the Department of Housing may not have been expecting to wake up to a glowing, and heavily data-led, report card on their performance on Monday morning, but that’s what they got. A report from Glenveagh Homes set out quite a positive view of the State’s attempts to tackle the ongoing housing emergency.“We are closer to resolving it than many might believe,” Glenveagh chief executive Stephen Garvey said as he forecast home completions would rise from 36,284 to more than 40,000 last year.A separate report from Goodbody, which was a companion piece of research that fed data into Glenveagh’s own publication, showed Ireland has been best-in-class at home building in recent years.READ MOREIt said the country was building 7.2 homes per 1,000 people at the moment, more than double the European average and three times more than the rate in the UK. “No other European country is building at this pace relative to its population. Across Europe, construction activity is falling,” Goodbody’s chief economist, Dermot O’Leary, said.O’Leary’s finding was based on data from Euroconstruct, a series that has tracked residential construction across 19 EU countries. [ Housing developer Glenveagh says land hoarding penalties must be stricterOpens in new window ]Ireland was one of only five member states to buck a trend of decline, with completions up 40 per cent between 2022 and 2026. Only Portugal’s rate of increase was higher.“Forecasts point to Ireland maintaining this position through 2027 and 2028, with completions expected to grow 30 per cent by 2028 (a rate beaten only by Spain and Hungary),” O’Leary said.Based on these projections, output in Ireland will rise to 7.7 and 8.3 units per 1,000 of the population in 2027 and 2028 respectively.The findings show Browne can lay claim to being Minister for Housing at a time when Ireland’s home-building sector is outperforming its European peers on many metrics.Will he or the Government take a victory lap? Probably not. Even though a lot of metrics point towards progress, a more crucial piece of data in the research is telling him to lay low. While Glenveagh and Goodbody feel there are indicators for optimism, the public don’t want to hear it. Red C Research commissioned by Glenveagh showed the public’s lived experience did not come close to reflecting what the reports found.Only 16 per cent believed Ireland was “making real progress on housing”, while 11 per cent of 18- to 34-year-olds felt progress was being made.Maybe lessons have been learned from Browne’s predecessor, Darragh O’Brien, who unwisely trumpeted before the 2024 general election that 40,000 homes would be built only to fall 10,000 short.