Grants of residential planning permissions increased in 2025 following a significant dip the year before, with house approvals higher than any time since 2009.
The 34,974 dwellings approved in 2025 was a 7.9 increase on 2024, with a particularly noticeable surge of approvals in the final three months of the year. The Central Statistics Office (CSO) figures record 8,208 housing permissions in October, November and December 2025, a 19.1 per cent uplift on the 6,890 built during those months in 2024.
Permission was given for 20,615 houses, which was the highest number since 2009, when 26,814 houses were approved. Multi-development house approvals were up by 8.5 per cent to 15,520 in 2025, while one-off house permissions increased by 3.9 per cent 5,095.
Kildare had the highest number of houses permitted, with 421 units approved, followed by Meath (414), Dublin (410) and Cork (409).
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While last year experienced a rise in residential permissions, the 2024 approvals were 21.4 per cent lower than the previous year. The fall-off was directly related to a rapid decline in apartment building.
Last year apartment permissions rose by 8.8 per cent, from 13,194 units to 14,359, and by 20.3 per cent across the capital, where they accounted for 51.3 per cent of dwelling permissions. This is still down significantly on apartment approvals in other years, including 21,487 in 2023, 16,723 in 2022, 26,272 in 2021 and 24,662 in 2020.
The Government sees apartments as key to boosting housing supply to its target rate of 50,000 units per year. In an effort to improve viability the Government has altered design standards, rent controls and reduced VAT on new-build apartments.
The new apartment standards reduce the minimum size for a studio apartment from 37sq m to 32sq m. The CSO figures show the average size of all apartments approved last year was 81.3sq m.
Leitrim had the lowest number of new dwelling approvals, with just 132 granted, followed by Longford (185) and Carlow (239). There were 9,352 units approved across the four Dublin local authorities, with Dublin City Council accounting for more than a third of these (3,310). The 5,323 approvals in Cork were almost evenly split between the city and county council areas, while in Galway, approvals were much higher in the county area (1,450) than in the city (465).
Of the commuter counties surrounding Dublin, Wicklow had the highest number of approvals (2,506), followed by Meath (2,342), Kildare (1,414) and Louth (1,208).
