Dr. Ronan Lyons:

I am grateful for the opportunity to join today’s discussion. I served as chair of the commission’s demand working group.

I was also chair of the minority report subcommittee which we can chat about later on if we wish or indeed, changes to rent pressure zones. As time is limited I will focus my opening remarks on the work of that demand working group. I wish publicly to thank all the members and our research support for their efforts in contributing to a fuller understanding of Ireland's medium- to long-term housing requirement. Despite the use of demand in the name of the group, the working group decided early on that housing requirement more than demand or need was the appropriate word because it avoids connotations of markets alone or indeed just meeting some basic minimum. Over the course of 18 months, the working group met frequently and discussed a variety of drivers of Ireland's housing requirement including factors affecting population size such as fertility, mortality and international migration. The group also considered how the population is organised into households. Through five complementary measures, including a unique survey of Ireland's younger adults, a consensus housing deficit for April 2022, the last census, was estimated at between 212,000 and 256,000 homes. That deficit which shows up principally through elevated household size, is ultimately about the inability of Ireland's younger adults to set up their own households. As it reflects data from over three years ago and does not account for any increased emigration or lower fertility due to a lack of housing, it should be regarded as a lower band.

In addition to a comparative perspective looking at how jurisdictions such as Northern Ireland or Scotland estimate their housing requirements, the demand working group also considered a range of other factors relevant to understanding the requirement including obsolescence, vacancy and dereliction, internal migration and the regional distribution of housing requirements, ageing and the type of housing required. The final report submitted by the working group to the commission ran to 150 pages and more than 53,000 words. It was after careful consideration of this material that the commission included six recommendations relating to Ireland's housing requirement including the one mentioned by Mr. John O'Connor in his opening remarks.

Table 2.2 of the report gives the commission's sense of how many homes are needed per year between 2024 and 2050. Those numbers range from 33,000 up to 81,000. As the commission noted in its report, the uncertainty in that large range is important. I will finish there but I look forward to the discussion. Thanks again for the opportunity to speak today.