Case for housebuilding restart 'overwhelming', industry claims

Irish Home Builders’ Association director James Benson argues for a phased reopening of the construction sector

Allowing housebuilding to resume on April 5 can pave the way for a full reopening of the construction sector, the industry has claimed.

The case for allowing the resumption of building work on private housing developments, from April 5, is “overwhelming”, an industry group has told the Government.

The Irish Home Builders’ Association (IHBA) said restarting building work on houses can be used as a yardstick to judge the safety of a total reopening of the construction sector.

The group said the Government has already created such a reopening model through the successful return of education.

Phased approach

“Just as government phased the reopening of schools to demonstrate it could be done safely, a similar approach to construction generally could be followed with home building reopening on April 5,” said IHBA director James Benson.

A return [to house building] is the right thing because the workplace is proven to be safe, because there is an urgent societal need for new homes and because continued closure would create serious risks of skills shortage, house price inflation, company failures and job losses.  

The IHBA said allowing the resumption of house building would “only” add 14,000 workers to sites, with them spread across hundreds of developments around the country.

“Private home building is the safest sector within construction, involving natural phasing of works, low site numbers and 60% of work outdoors,” Mr Benson said.

Reopening construction

Reopening construction is expected to dominate the Government’s latest review of restrictions. 

Over the weekend, the Construction Industry Federation said it was “deeply concerned” that the bulk of the building sector may remain closed beyond April 5 and said a full reopening is needed.

It said thousands of skilled workers are considering leaving Ireland and that Ireland’s attractiveness to investors is at risk, along with its capacity to deliver essential housing and infrastructure over the medium-term.

Conservative approach

"It now seems likely that the Government will take a conservative approach to easing business restrictions in April, perhaps allowing construction to reopen," said Davy chief economist Conall MacCoille. 

"Given the slow pace of vaccine rollout, our assumption that business restrictions will be eased in May across the broad non-essential retail and services sectors now looks optimistic."