NEW FIGURES PUBLISHED this morning by the Central Statistics Office show a decline in the volume of residential building for the second quarter in a row.

In the first two quarters of this year, residential building output declined -5.9% and -8.8% respectively compared to 2013.

There was an overall increase of 10.4% last year, with an increase in each quarter, following six straight years of decline.

The CSO said:

Given the unprecedented low base this series is starting from, the CSO will continue to monitor the quality and comparability of this new data series.

However, the volume of output in all areas of building and construction, including non-residential and civil engineering, increased for the sixth quarter in a row, this time by 4.1%.

“This reflects increases of 9.3% and 4.7% in civil engineering and non-residential building respectively while there was a decrease of 1.9% in the volume of residential building,” the CSO said.

In terms of volume of production, the non-residential sector has a shown double-digit increases for the last five quarters compared to the year previous.

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