Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent)
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23. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government his views on the system of assessing building completions used by his Department; his plans to develop a more accurate system for recording housing and apartment building completions; the position regarding the work of the internal group within his Department tasked with examining housing statistics; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [45288/17]

Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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Under the Government's Rebuilding Ireland Action Plan for Housing and Homelessness, a key objective is to increase the supply of housing to 25,000 homes per annum.  As we improve our housing systems and put in place a housing delivery model that is sustainable and responsive to changing economic and societal demands, it is critical that any future policy interventions that become necessary can be identified and planned for in good time, underscoring the importance of quality data that are timely, accurate and informative. 

Housing activity data is available from a range of different indicators – planning permissions, construction commencement notices, building insurance registrations and ESB connections to the grid - all of which are tracked and published by my Department on the Rebuilding Ireland website. 

ESB connections data have been used in the past by my Department and others as the only consistent long-term proxy for housing output with full coverage i.e. every home is connected to the electricity grid. Acknowledging the limitations of the current ESB data-set, while still being informed by it in particular, my Department no longer uses it as a proxy for new house building activity. I am committed to developing a more robust method of capturing house completions and improving the data that is currently being recorded as they relate to newly constructed homes.  

In this context, my Department and the Central Statistics Office (CSO) are continuing to work with the ESB to identify and supply to the CSO a more detailed dataset on connections which can be used to estimate the number of new builds.  Good progress has been made on this issue, which is technically complex. Once the detailed ESB data is received by the CSO, they will require a period of time to review and analyse it by matching it to other datasets, and to build a methodology for estimating and tracking new builds, based on the best available data. This project is advancing well and all parties are committed to its further progression as quickly as possible.

In addition, my Department has established a Housing Data Analytics Group, with membership from the CSO, ESRI, Central Bank, local authorities and others, to examine this complex area and to monitor and review the various sources of data collected nationally, with the aim of providing a comprehensive and coherent suite of statistics relating to housing matters.  This Group is due to hold its fourth meeting next month.