{"id":200144,"date":"2025-12-19T13:05:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-19T13:05:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/200144\/"},"modified":"2025-12-19T13:05:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T13:05:08","slug":"central-bank-questions-government-housing-target-of-300000-new-homes-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/200144\/","title":{"rendered":"Central Bank questions Government housing target of 300,000 new homes \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Central Bank of Ireland<\/a> has raised doubts over whether the Government<\/a> will achieve its target of building 300,000 new homes by 2030.<\/p>\n

In its latest quarterly bulletin, the regulator forecast housing completions would reach 33,500 this year before rising to 37,000, 40,500 and 44,500 in 2026, 2027 and 2028 respectively.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe sum over those years, including this year, would be about 155,000 … that would make it challenging that in the last two years you would produce the same again,\u201d the Central Bank\u2019s director of economics and statistics Robert Kelly said.<\/p>\n

The Government\u2019s new housing<\/a> plan promises that a minimum of 300,000 new homes will be built by 2030 but a sharp slowdown in commencements has placed a question mark over that target.<\/p>\n

The Central Bank said its housing forecasts were conditional on the Government\u2019s revised National Development Plan<\/a> delivering new infrastructure \u201cthat relieves current binding constraints in energy, water and wastewater\u201d.<\/p>\n

The forecasts also assumed that current bottlenecks around planning and the availability of zoned land are addressed.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf it was a case that we get more [housing] enablers coming at the same time, that action plan meets all its targets, and we start unlocking it quicker, it could be the case there\u2019s some upside in those numbers,\u201d Mr Kelly said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut our central expectation is we\u2019ll have about 155,000 units by the end of 2028.\u201d <\/p>\n

In its wider assessment of the economy, the Central Bank said the Irish economy had performed better than expected in 2025 and had showed \u201cresilience\u201d in the face of headwinds from US tariffs<\/a> and wider trade uncertainty.<\/p>\n

It said it expected growth in terms of modified domestic demand (MDD), a measure that attempts to strip out the distorting effect of multinationals, to be close to 4 per cent this year.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0We need 75 firms building 400 units each a year to meet housing targetsOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

The stronger growth was down to continued \u201cpositive momentum\u201d in multinational investment and lower tariff uncertainty.<\/p>\n

However, it warned that the rapid growth in employment and incomes that has underpinned consumer spending since 2021 would moderate from here on in, \u201cfeeding into a lower projected pace of growth\u201d.<\/p>\n

Headline growth (in MDD terms) is expected to average 2.9 per cent between 2026 and 2028. <\/p>\n

A cooler labour market is also expected to see employment growth easing to below 2 per cent during the period, while the unemployment rate is expected to average 5 per cent with average wage growth easing back from 4.6 per cent this year to 3.5 per cent in 2028.<\/p>\n

The regulator also noted that the outlook was for \u201cslightly higher overall inflation\u201d on the back of services price growth, which has \u201csettled into a persistently higher phase post\u2011Covid, at around 3 per cent\u201d. <\/p>\n

Overall inflation is expected to average 2 per cent per annum out to 2028.<\/p>\n

\u201cDespite the notable challenges the Irish economy has faced this year it has shown resilience throughout 2025,\u201d Mr Kelly said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe outlook for the Irish economy in the medium term is being shaped by differing sectoral performances, ongoing structural change, geopolitical tensions and policy actions both at home and abroad. <\/p>\n

\u201cMultinational sectors that predominantly export are adapting to a changing international environment for trade and investment, and so far that adjustment has been relatively benign for Ireland.<\/p>\n

\u201cDomestic activity signals are more mixed, with data pointing to a slower pace of growth and higher inflation,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Central Bank of Ireland has raised doubts over whether the Government will achieve its target of building…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":200145,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,20927,1523,3662,61,60,3413,1963],"class_list":["post-200144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-central-bank-of-ireland","tag-government","tag-housing-crisis","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-national-development-plan","tag-us-tariffs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200144"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200144\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/200145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}