Barry Cowen (Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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2179. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government the reason his Department makes the assumption that 400 new housing units are converted each year when estimating annual completion statistics; and his views on whether this is a wholly outdated statistical practice in view of the fact that there are a number of more accurate measures for counting or estimating the number of conversions each year. [27304/17]

Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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My Department collates and publishes a wide range of housing statistics that inform the preparation and evaluation of policy. Data on number of private house completions, which are based on the use of ESB connections, are available on my Department’s website at - .  

Methodological changes to the way this data is collected or presented are made from time to time. My Department included an estimate for the number of conversions for a number of years to reflect a concern that the data was not fully reflective of total activity. Conversions were added to the figures collected from the ESB to account for the fact that self-contained dwellings, provided by way of the conversion of existing buildings were no longer being included in the ESB data at that time. An annual estimate of 400 such units were added on the basis of an analysis of planning permissions which was carried out at the time of this change of methodology. This practice ceased at the end of 2008 and no completions estimates since that date include these adjustments.