Local councils are set to zone enough land over the next 15 years to facilitate the construction of one million new homes, the head of policy and research with homebulder Glenveagh has said.<\/p>\n
Kevin Dillon said updated local authority development plans will lift the State\u2019s residential land bank to approximately 25,000 hectares by 2040.<\/p>\n
Combined with new housing density guidelines, this is enough land to support an extra million homes, he told the Dublin Economics Workshop\u2019s annual policy conference in Wexford.<\/p>\n
The State\u2019s 31 city and local authorities have been directed by Government to zone more land to accelerate the supply of housing.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis zoning process is currently underway across all 31 local authorities and should be completed by 2030,\u201d Dillon said. <\/p>\n
\u201cThat will make the price of land cheaper which in turn will make the price of homes cheaper,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Glenveagh projects the total stock of occupied homes in the Republic to double by 2065 (to approximtely four million homes) with that growth front-loaded out to 2040 when demand is highest. <\/p>\n
Dillon described the increase in the State\u2019s capital budget for housing over the last 10 years as \u201cextraordinary\u201d, noting it has risen from \u20ac432 million in 2016 to over \u20ac5 billion this year.<\/p>\n
This equates to 2.3 per cent of national income compared to a European average of 0.4 per cent.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are investing more and building more (in per capita terms) than any other country in Europe,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Glenveagh is \u201cbullish\u201d about the outlook, believing there will be over 40,000 new homes built this year, Dillon said.<\/p>\n
In its recent half-year results, the company upgraded its own home delivery targets to 2,900 this year and 3,100 in 2027.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe policy mix is right. The (State) spending is making a difference and that\u2019s having a multiplier effect on private spending,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Dillon said the company\u2019s \u201cbiggest frustration\u201d was getting clearance certifications to use various modern methods of construction (MMC).<\/p>\n
MMC is an umbrella term for innovative construction techniques but generally refers to construction that takes place off site.<\/p>\n
Dillon said about 40 per cent of a typical Glenveagh home is built off site using MMC but the company wants to get that to 70 per cent. MMC makes costs \u201cfar more predictable,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
In a module on the energy transition, Kieran O\u2019Brien from the Irish Academy of Engineering told the conference that about 20 per cent of the natural gas consumed by Irish households was fracked gas coming from the US.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis argument about fracked gas is absolutely silly,\u201d O\u2019Brien said.<\/p>\n
Ireland used to have a strict ban on importing fracked gas and is still the only country in Western Europe without any LNG (liquefied natural gas) importing infrastructure.<\/p>\n
But the Government has changed its stance in the face of the current energy security crisis and now intends to build an LNG terminal in the Shannon estuary.<\/p>\n
US president Donald Trump on his trip to Ireland urged the State to buy more LNG from the US.<\/p>\n
O\u2019Brien claimed the Government had repeatedly set unrealistic targets for switching to renewables.<\/p>\n
Ireland\u2019s initial climate action plan in 2019 set a target of generating 3,500 MW (Megawatts) from offshore wind by 2030.<\/p>\n
\u201cA year later it was 5,000 MW, two years later it was 7,000 MW,\u201d he said. But to date the State generates no power from offshore wind and is not expected to do so until at least 2031. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the kind of crazy targets we\u2019re setting without any plan to get there,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Harry Williamson from the Department of Finance told the conference that his department\u2019s research indicated about 63 per cent of jobs in Ireland were in occupations that would be affected by AI (artificial intelligence).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Local councils are set to zone enough land over the next 15 years to facilitate the construction of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":624062,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1441,10863,72,17347,6285,61,60,10864],"class_list":["post-624061","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-afp","tag-bestof","tag-business","tag-essential","tag-horizontal","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-topix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624061","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=624061"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624061\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/624062"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=624061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=624061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=624061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}