CSO figures shed light on volume of housing plans green-lit in Cork

A CSO report has shown an increase in the amount of houses and apartments granted planning permission in the fourth quarter of 2023, with a large percentage of these permissions being granted in Cork.

Dublin accounted for 45% of all apartments approved during Q4 2023, closely followed by Cork at 34% (2,114 units), and then Meath (5%).

Cork also came second in house units granted planning permission in the final quarter of the year, with 585 units granted permission, and 12% of all houses granted permission in Cork, just behind Dublin’s 15%.

In total for 2023, 2,431 homes in Dublin city were approved, the highest number of any region in the country.

But in Cork, the county far outperformed the city, with 92 new dwellings granted permission in Cork city and 759 in the wider Cork area.

In total, 592 permissions were granted in Cork city last year. This figure includes new construction dwellings, other new construction, extensions and conversions. In the county, the figure was 2,282.

Cork-based Statistician Shane O’Sullivan explained that many of these houses and apartments approved each year tend to be part of a large development, and applications that have a mixed component, eg, 100 houses or 50 apartments would still only be counted as one new planning permission.

“Counties with a large rural area such as Cork tend to a have a higher number of individual planning applications approved due to a higher portion of these being for one-off houses,” he explained.

The permissions granted encompass 1,062 individual apartments in Cork county and 1,856 in the city, while for houses the county saw permission granted for 2,221 houses compared to 455 in the city.

Nationally, there was an annual increase of almost 21% in the total number of dwelling units approved in 2023, up from 34,177 units in 2022 to 41,225 units in 2023 and following an annual decrease of 20.5% in 2022.