Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, Independent)
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356. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government his views on the fact that his Department is depending on ESB network connections to the electricity supply to verify the number of new house completions; his further views on whether this method is not a true reflection of the number of new house builds over the past number of years; and his plans for an alternative method to extrapolate a more comprehensive data on housing flows, new builds, completions and estimated net additions to total national stock in addition to a breakdown of these into private, voluntary and local authority components. [9670/17]

Noel Rock (Dublin North West, Fine Gael)
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382. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government if his Department has plans to change the way it monitors house completion rates from new electricity connections in view of concerns that new electricity connections can be triggered to work on existing buildings or previously vacant sites; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [10160/17]

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 356 and 382 together.

My Department receives detailed monthly data from the ESB on the number of connections to the electricity grid; these data have for many years been used as a proxy for house completions as units are normally connected at the point at which the unit is ready for occupation. My Department maintains regular contact with the ESB to ensure that this data set remains relevant and consistent over time. The ESB recently confirmed to the Department that the connections figure includes a small, but not easily quantified, number of re-connections to the grid where the unit was disconnected, and therefore vacant, for at least two years. Furthermore, they also confirmed that service alterations are not included in the connections figures.

The Census of Population and Housing published by the Central Statistics Office provides the most detailed breakdown of the housing stock and further details on the position as at end April 2016 will be published by April 20th 2017. Between Census waves my Department also produces annual estimates of the net change to the housing stock using available data including but not limited to the completions data. These estimates can be found on the Department’s website at:

My Department also provides quarterly and annual breakdowns of completions figures into private, voluntary and social housing. These figures can be found on the Department’s website under the heading of completions by sector at:

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I recently published a first Monthly Housing Indicators Report which showed that there are now clear positive signs of increased housing activity across all available indicators. This report can be found on the Rebuilding Ireland website at:

My Department collaborates on an ongoing basis with the CSO and ESB to identify ways of enhancing and improving the data available on changes to the housing stock to ensure that the best possible information is available to inform policy development and implementation.