Number of new homes built last year drops by more than 6%

By Cate McCurry, PA

A total of 30,330 new homes were built in 2024, a drop of 6.7 per cent compared to the previous year, new statistics show.

The latest figures from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) also shows that the number of apartments completed in 2024 was 8,763, down 24.1 per cent from 2023.

There were 16,200 scheme dwelling completions in 2024, a rise of 4.6 per cent from 2023 while 5,367 single dwellings were completed last year, a fall of 2.2 per cent from 2023.

In 2024, 53.4 per cent of completions were scheme dwellings, 28.9 per cent were apartments, and 17.7 per cent were single dwellings.

More than half of new builds for the full year were in Dublin or the mid-east, which includes Kildare, Louth, Meath, and Wicklow.

The figures are a long way off what was predicted by outgoing minister for housing Darragh O’Brien.

Last October, he said that the Government would exceed to Housing For All target for 2024 of around 33,000 new builds.

He said new house builds would be in the high 30,000s or low 40,000s for the whole year.

By local electoral area, the most completions last year were in Donaghmede in Dublin with 1,178.

Over 500 of these completions in Donaghmede were in the last three months of 2024.

There was a fall of 17.4 per cent in seasonally adjusted new dwelling completions from third quarter of 2024 to the fourth quarter.

The CSO uses new residential connections to the electricity network as the basis for statistics on new dwelling completions, a data source that is collected nationally by one organisation in a consistent manner for all dwellings.

Statistician Steven Conroy said: “The number of new dwelling completions in 2024 was 30,330, a decrease of 6.7 per cent from 2023.

“In October, November, and December there were 8,732 completions, a fall of 14.5 per cent from Q4 2023.”

Between 2023 and 2024, the largest relative decrease was in apartment completions, which were down 24 per cent from 11,542 in 2023 to 8,763 in 2024.

Five regions Dublin, midlands, mid-east, border, and the west of Ireland, saw a decrease in new dwelling completions between 2023 and 2024 with the highest fall in the mid-east at 17.5 per cent.

Over the year, some 35 per cent of national completions were in Dublin with 18 per cent in the mid-east.

Between the last quarter of 2023 and the last quarter of 2024, the number of new dwelling completions fell in Dublin, the midlands (Laois, Longford, Offaly, Westmeath), the mid-east, and the south-east (Carlow, Kilkenny, Wexford, and Waterford).

This ranged from a 53 per cent fall in the border area including Cavan, Donegal, Leitrim, Monaghan, and Sligo, region to a 9.5 per cent fall in the midlands.

There were 8,763 apartments completed nationally in 2024, representing 28 per cent of the total number of completions.

In Dublin, 6,574 apartments were completed, which accounted for 60 per cent of all completions in Dublin, and 75 per cent of all apartments completed nationally.

More than one quarter of all scheme completions were in the mid-east in 2024 and 16 per cent of all single dwellings completed were in the west.