Barry Heneghan (Dublin Bay North, Independent)
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1635. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government the number of new housing completions required annually over the next five years in order to meet the combined demand from existing housing need and projected levels of immigration; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [43823/25]

James Browne (Wexford, Fianna Fail)
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The Programme for Government commits to a new national housing plan to underpin delivery of more than 300,000 houses between 2025 and end 2030, including delivery of an average of 12,000 and 15,000 social and starter homes per annum over the period. This increased goal was largely based on the ESRI's research paper, "Population projections, the flow of new households and structural housing demand" which projects estimated growth scenarios that take include migration estimates, as well as factoring unmet demand.

Work to translate these national targets to local authority, tenure-specific targets is ongoing. The new targets will be agreed and published as part of the new national housing plan in the coming months.

Barry Heneghan (Dublin Bay North, Independent)
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1636. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government the proportion of the national housing stock made up of apartments; how this compares with the OECD average; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [43824/25]

James Browne (Wexford, Fianna Fail)
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Continuing to increase the supply of new homes is key to meeting need and addressing many of the challenges currently facing the housing market. Supply has increased significantly in recent years. Some 148,500 new homes have been delivered since the beginning of 2020, with 92,400 of these delivered between 2022 and 2024 inclusive, exceeding the combined target for the period by 5,400 or so.

An adequate supply and mix of housing across housing types and tenures is critical to addressing the current imbalance between supply and demand in the housing market, including home ownership, social housing and private rental.

Data on the proportion of national housing stock made up of apartments can be found in the most recent Census 2022 data on the CSO website at the following link:

While apartment completions as a share of total completions grew significantly between 2020 and 2023, up from less than one-fifth of all completions in 2020 to more than one-third in 2023, they comprised 29% of new homes in 2024. Encouragingly, after a very significant drop-off in apartment delivery in 2024, the figures show a 56% increase in apartments in the first half of this year as compared with the same period in 2024, with more than 4,800 apartments completed in the first half of 2025.

The Programme for Government commits to building on the successes of Housing for All and ramping up supply further to deliver 300,000 homes between 2025 and 2030. A roadmap for hitting this target will be set out in a new housing plan to be published in the coming months. In the meantime, Government is already bringing forward actions to boost delivery. The recently revised National Planning Framework is a major step forward in this regard, and will help increase capacity and accelerate home building across the country, while new Housing Activation Office will work to address barriers to the delivery of infrastructure projects needed to enable housing development.

The Planning and Development (Amendment) Bill 2025 has been approved, published and enacted before the summer recess last week. This is essential legislation to deal with expiring planning permissions and to encourage activation of housing. Government also agreed to amend the rent pressure zone framework, which among other things will help stimulate increased development of apartments over the longer-term.

The new Planning Design Standards for Apartments to allow greater flexibility vis-à-vis the size and mix of apartment types – the measures could reduce the cost of building apartments by some €50,000 to €100,000 per apartment, helping increase apartment viability, facilitate increased supply, and address affordability challenges and the next call for expressions of interest under the Croí Cónaithe Cities scheme has been issued – the scheme will help activate the thousands of planning permissions for apartments in our cities.

In the meantime, further measures to stimulate development activity will be considered in the context of the new national housing plan, which Government aims to publish in the coming months.