Figures show how much development land has been sold in Ireland in 2016

New figures released today show that €350m worth of development land has been sold in the Irish market in the first three months of the year.

The statistics by the commercial property consultants CBRE Ireland, show that 28 development land transactions were completed in the first quarter of the year.

CBRE says there has been strong activity in the development land market since the beginning of the year.

2015 was described as a bumper year, as more than €770m worth of transactions were completed in the Irish market.

Peter Garrigan, Senior Surveyor for Development Land at the consultants, said: "Against a backdrop of severe undersupply in the residential sector and continued strong demand in the commercial property sector, it is perhaps not surprising that the demand for development land has continued unabated in 2016.

"In fact, there has been noticeable increase in the volume of land being offered for sale since the beginning of the year with many of these sites emanating from various loan portfolios traded over the last number of years."