ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER set of claims about how the government is – or isn’t – tackling the housing crisis.

New figures released by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) have revealed that property prices rose by 7% nationally in the 12 months to December, and that the median cost of buying a home in Dublin is now €500,000.

The news prompted debates about whether enough homes are being built to tackle the chronic undersupply of places for people to live.

During a panel discussion on Virgin Media One’s Tonight Show, Fianna Fáil senator Mary Fitzpatrick claimed that more housing is being built in Ireland than ever, which was disputed by Social Democrats TD Rory Hearne.

Who is right?

The Claim

Senator Mary Fitzpatrick claimed that more homes are being built in Ireland than ever before.

On The Tonight Show on Wednesday 18 February, Fitzpatrick was asked by host Shane Coleman what hope the government could give to people looking to buy their own home.

In response, she said:

There has never been more home building taking place in this country than there is right now.

Social Democrats spokesperson Rory Hearne said this was “factually incorrect”.

The Evidence

We asked Fianna Fáil for the evidence for Fitzpatrick’s claim.

In response, a spokesperson for the party said that the senator was “referring to the state building, in that we (the Government) are building more social homes than we have since the 1970s”.

However, at no point in the exchange did Fitzpatrick mention social housing, and it is clear she was talking about private housing.

Her response was to a question about giving hope to people looking to buy their own home, and even mentioned financial supports for prospective homebuyers.

At one point, she described a person buying their own home as making “the biggest investment she’ll ever make”.

And when Hearne suggested that a number of the homes built during the Celtic Tiger, she referred to some of them as being defective and did not rebut his figure.

Official figures from the CSO state that 36,284 new homes were built in 2025.

This was a 20.4% increase on the 30,330 homes that were built in 2024 and was the highest number of completions since the CSO began collating data on house-building in 2011.

But although completion levels are at the highest they’ve been in a decade and a half, they are not higher than they have ever been.

Government data compiled by the Housing Agency indicates that there were more homes built from the late 1990s until the economic crash in 2008 than there are now. 

It’s worth noting that this data isn’t directly comparable to the CSO figures because a different methodology is used for the two sets. 

The CSO uses a particular definition to define the construction of a home: a house or apartment is deemed complete when it is connected to Ireland’s electricity network. The agency also cross-references this data to ensure its accuracy.

By comparison, official figures up to 2009 were compiled by different departments, including the Department of the Environment and the Department of Local Government.

Although their figures also relied upon ESB connections, a 2018 review by the CSO found that figures overestimated the levels of new homes built up to 2017 by about a third.

The data wasn’t cross-referenced to the same extent as it is now, with completion figures deemed to be more conservative than they once were.

Nevertheless, the two sets of data are the only official figures that are available and the statistics on the Housing Agency’s website up to 2011 have been published as if they are accurate.

According to those statistics, there were more homes built in every year from 1998 to 2008 than there were in 2025.

Even allowing for a significant level of overcounting during that timeframe, it is almost certainly not the case that fewer than 36,284 homes were built during the peak of the Celtic Tiger.

In 2005, 75,398 new homes were built, while 88,211 were built in 2006; both are more than double the number of homes built last year.

The Journal contacted Fianna Fáil to ask for Fitzpatrick to provide evidence for her claim that Ireland is now building more homes than ever before; however, no response was received by the time of publication.

Verdict

Senator Mary Fitzpatrick claimed that Ireland is currently building more homes than ever before.

Fianna Fáil claimed in response that she was referring to the construction of social homes, though there is no evidence from the exchange that this is what she meant.

CSO figures show that 36,284 homes were built in 2025, the highest number since the agency began counting in 2011.

However, older government data states that more homes were built in every year from 1998 to 2008 (though there may have been some overcounting in those years).

The years 2005 and 2006 in particular saw more than double the number of houses completed in Ireland than was the case in 2025.

Therefore, we rate Fitzpatrick’s claim as FALSE. As per our verdict guide, this means the claim is inaccurate.

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