Madam, – The article “621 ‘ghost estates’ built across State” (Home News, January 27th), and other recent print media reports fail to pick up on an important distinction between total vacant stock and the excess of vacant stock over normal levels. The latter provides a much clearer picture of the amount of housing that is available for occupation – a more important consideration from the point of view of trying to match oversupply of housing with rising social housing need.
The figures quoted from Minister of State, Michael Finneran, were an estimate of the “excess” stock of vacant units over what would be the “normal” level. This estimate was sourced through a report prepared for the Department of the Environment, and put the figure for the “excess” stock over normal at between 122,000 and 147,000 (excluding abandoned properties).
The report also provided an estimate for the total stock of empty dwellings at June 2009 (excluding abandoned properties) of between 228,000 and 253,000, depending on our assumptions.
The recent study by the National Institute for Regional and Spatial Analysis (NIRSA) uses a similar methodology to the one used in the preparation of the report for the Department of the Environment, but the NIRSA estimate also includes abandoned properties. – Yours, etc,