Ken O'Flynn (Cork North-Central, Independent Ireland Party)
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278. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government the actions his Department is taking to address regional disparities in house price inflation, including rises of over 8% in Connacht-Ulster and 7.2% outside Dublin, as reported in the latest website (details supplied) survey. [53115/25]

Ken O'Flynn (Cork North-Central, Independent Ireland Party)
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279. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government if his Department tracks the gap between general consumer price inflation and housing price inflation; and if so, the steps being taken to bring housing inflation in line with wider economic inflation trends. [53116/25]

James Browne (Wexford, Fianna Fail)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 278 and 279 together.

Continuing to increase supply is key to meeting need and addressing many of the challenges currently facing the housing market. Increasing supply will help moderate house price growth and ease affordability challenges.

Supply has increased significantly in recent years. Some 140,000 new homes have been delivered since July 2020, with 92,400 of these delivered between 2022 and 2024 inclusive, exceeding the combined target for the period by 5,400 or so.

The most recent Residential Property Price Index, which measures the changes in average prices actually paid, suggests the increase in prices paid for homes has been dampening for some time, with rises moderating from 10.1% in August last year to 7.5% in July. The monthly rate of increase in residential house prices has fallen from 1.2% in July 2024 to 0.8% in July this year.

Government continues to bring forward measures to help build upon the uplift in supply over the last three years and help dampen house prices growth and ease affordability challenges across the country. 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 the 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 was approved, published and enacted before the summer recess. This is essential legislation to deal with expiring planning permissions and to encourage activation of housing.

The new Planning Design Standards for Apartments will allow greater flexibility vis-à-vis the size and mix of apartment types to help increase apartment viability, facilitate increased supply, and address affordability challenges.

A 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.

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.

Plans have recently been announced for an enhanced LDA, to enable the delivery of more homes across the country, with the body working to deliver more private housing as well as social, affordable and cost rental.

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 weeks.

My Department does not collect data in relation to general consumer price inflation, this data can be found on the Central Statistics Office (CSO) website at: data.cso.ie/table/CPM12