Rate of building is the highest in Europe - Minister

THE rate of new house-building in this country is the highest in Europe, according to the Minister for State at the Department of the Environment, Ms Liz McManus.

Speaking last night in Dublin, she said that at 9.5 units per 1,000 of population the house-building rate in this country was "about three times higher than that of the UK". The only country remotely near our rate of new house-building is Germany, she said. And there the rate is greatly influenced by the rebuilding of the former East Germany.

Last year 9,446 new housing units were completed in the Dublin area alone, 50 per cent higher than projected, the Minister said, while in the country as a whole more than 33,700 units were finished, an increase of 10 per cent. The growth is continuing this year, she said, with registrations of new houses under the HomeBond guarantee scheme for the first quarter of 1997 up 32 per cent nationally, and 36 per cent in the Dublin area. The indicators were that this trend was continuing.

Ms McManus spoke of the potential of "brown field" sites in catering for Dublin's future housing needs. Involving the re-use of derelict land, the demolition of old houses, offices, etc., "would release valuable building land", she said. The Docklands area of Dublin had the potential to contribute significantly where the area's future housing needs were concerned.

It would be ideal, she thought, to reduce as far as possible the distance people had to commute for work, education, or leisure. "We must continue to reinforce and indeed reinvest in the residential heart of Dublin as a living city," she said. Apartments represented 40 per cent of housing output in the Dublin area generally, she said, and 70 per cent in the corporation area. "We are already moving sharply in the direction of more efficient land use in the new residential sector in Dublin."

The Minister was speaking at the launch of Dublin's Housing Demand to the Next Millennium, a report compiled by the Society of Chartered Surveyors.

It forecast that the number of households in the Dublin area is expected to increase by 9 per cent over the next five years, and that this will require the zoning of significant new areas of land for housing in the greater Dublin region. This would also push house prices up still further.

It was also critical of the way housing statistics are compiled at the moment, and said that at present they take no account of the present overspill of population from Dublin into the surrounding counties. However, the Minister said "the supply projections for the report are at variance with what is happening on the ground."

Welcoming the report in general, she noted that its projections "do not take account of actual housing output in 1995 and 1996".