In 2006, there were four times more houses being built.

A Residential Land Supply Study from Savills Ireland has outlined that the targets in the National Planning Framework – the guide which determines how Ireland will develop out to 2040 – are “fundamentally flawed”.

Its research reveals there has been a large reduction of zoned residential land available for development within the Greater Dublin Area – Dublin, Meath, Kildare and Wicklow – which would have had the capacity to accommodate over 100,000 units of housing.

Savills said that the amount of land zoned for residential development is “too little to realistically deliver the required housing, even at the low targets”.

John Ring, director of research at Savills Ireland emphasised the changes that need to be made to the housing supply in the country: “If we look at the amount of housing we’re delivering in Dublin currently, it’s four units of housing per 1,000 people. If we compare that to 1996, which is 25 years ago, it was more than double that at nine houses per 1,000 people.”

“And it was at 16 houses per 1,000 people in 2006. We’re not saying we should go back to those levels, but we need to increase significantly from where we are currently.”

In August, Daft.ie reported their lowest level of availability of houses since they began their quarterly reports in 2006. There were just 716 homes available to rent nationwide on 1 August.

Meanwhile, the Ingka Group – the parent company of IKEA – has announced that they will invest 100 million euro into building 150 social housing units over three years in the greater Dublin area.

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