Plans in train to fast-track new housing
A light-rail commuter train heads east to Cobh/Midleton from Kent Station, Cork. New home developments are central to plans to invest €200m on rail and light rail, with €1.9bn going into housing by 2040. Photo: Larry Cummins
The new homes sector is a bit like running for that vital bus. But, instead of that bus being a sitting target at the bus stop, it’s already moving away, not ever having really stopped: frustratingly, it had just slowed a bit to give the impression of being reachable.
Simply, to catch that bus, you and everyone in the queue with you have to run even faster to get on board.
Ditto with new house supply: the parallel is to have more buses arriving, of various sizes, with way more seating capacity, as well as an increase in frequency.
Heck, the demand is now so high, we could do with a continuous conveyor belt to get momentum going, people moving and destinations – homes – reached.
Demand is growing, from the Republic’s expected population growth of one million more people by 2040 than the country had in 2016 (it’s already up 8% to 5.14 million), along with changes in household formation, family size, immigration, needs to accommodate asylum seekers and refugees from zones of strife, and economic growth.
Then, there’s the returning emigrants hopefully who’ll help build the houses the country needs as well as the homes they themselves will need … an ironic take, surely, on the circular economy we are caught up in.
A million more population? Sounds conservative. We’re going to need bigger, better and faster busses, or there’ll be ‘standing room only, upstairs.’ Or, stacking.
As the escalating needs have grown, one on top of the others, the Government has doggedly stuck up ‘til now with the stated targets of an average of 33,000 homes per year until 2030 to deliver 300,000 new homes, from the Housing for All Plan’s start in 2021.
That ‘average’ was just about reached in 2023 with over 32,000 new units supplied, having risen from a low of c 20,000 units in 2021: home much more will we have to pick up pace on, to make up for lost ground?
Forecasts are for 34,000 of 35,000 units for the next year or two, so say end 2025, of the plan stretching up to 2030 given various constraints, including well-documented labour and skills shortages.
And, that’s at a time when just about even commentator has been saying for the past year or two that supply should be hitting 50,000 units pa. Increasingly, several are starting to push that target up to 60,000 homes pa: truly, we are chasing that elusive, departing bus.
 It’s not all bleak, however.
A cursory trip by bus, car, bike or on foot around our major cities, suburbs, towns and villages shows the effect of construction activity on the ground having already ramped up since the plan, sites opened, services wending their way out, new cycle lanes, talks of more public transport corridors and more frequent bus services to serve expanding regions, real ones, not just metaphorical ones.
Figures released by Cork City Hall in January 2024 claimed that three times more housing was built in the city in the five years between 2019 and 2023 than in the five years’ period prior, tallying up as 4,735 homes completed for 12,700 persons.
On the visible evidence, the pace is indeed and belatedly picking up all the more, and as the housing tenure type evolves from the once-‘normal’ private supply to embrace more social housing, cost rental, affordable homes/shared equity, and more.
Today, it’s estimated that just about one third of the country’s output currently put as above at just shy of 33,000 completed units currently come to the market for direct sale to individuals, vs perhaps 75% aimed at private buyers in the early to mid-2000s?
In Cork alone apartments are finally coming on stream, and not just the purpose built and expensive ones done for students over the past five years: witness the new blocks in Blackpool, a major block out at Jacob’s Island in Mahon, the go-ahead announced for finally fundable apartment schemes on the north and south quays, at Horgans Quay by Apple offices and Kent rail station, and at Albert Quay (the Sextant site) following incentives and supports such as the Croà Cónaithe (Towns) Fund: others are already up and running under cost rental schemes at the likes of Lancaster Quay.
Significant new homes schemes are on site north of the city, most notably Ballyvolane; Waterfall; in outer Douglas at Castletreasure; at Passage West/Rochestown, Crosshaven, Glanmire and Ovens.
Further out, Bandon, Kinsale, Macroom, Carrigtwohill, and Midleton have volumes on the way. These latter two, like Cobh, are served by a rail line, ironically a 19th century bit of infrastructure now being ‘rediscovered as City Hall promises to spend €200m on rail and light rail as a far vaster €1.9bn is to be spend on housing Government public sector partners by 2040.
Visible site clearance works have also occurred at the city’s long-promised south docks’ new residential campus, with various plannings secured for thousands of homes but due to necessary infrastructure issues (as well as new bridges, etc,) in a total spend put at €200m it will be several years yet before real residential volume comes here to a true 21st century Cork.
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