TAOISEACH LEO VARADKAR has rowed in behind the Central Statistics Office (CSO) over a disagreement surrounding housing completion figures.

In late January, the CSO reported that there had been 29,851 new houses completed in 2022 and that this had exceeded the Government’s housing targets.

However, figures published by the Construction Information Services (CIS) indicate that there were only 23,751 built in 2022, a difference of 6,100 new-build houses.

A spokesperson for CIS told The Journal that their figures are collated from the National Building Control Office, which is responsible for confirming house completions.

Meanwhile, CSO housing figures are collated through ESB connection data and are compared against Building Energy Rating (BER) certs issued when new builds are completed.

The CIS spokesperson said that data made available through the National Building Control Office is controlled by legislation and that they were confident the figures were correct.

However, the CSO has defended its methodology and said that the data collection method used by CIS was inconsistent and that it had missed the completion of around 5,500 one-off homes built in 2022.

“In addition, there was also a concern around a potential time lag between the connection to the electricity network and the full certification of completion process which could lead to an understatement of completions in that period,” the CSO statement said. 

Speaking in the Dáil earlier this afternoon, Varadkar said that there had been debates in the past about how the Government counted housing figures and that the current method used by the CSO had been welcomed by opposition housing spokespeople.

Back in 2016 and 2017, the Housing Department could not provide accurate figures on completions because it didn’t have a consistent method of calculation. (See The Journal‘s report from January 2018 here.) 

“I remember having this debate, on how we count the numbers, during the last Government when Eoghan Murphy was the then Minister with responsibility for housing,” Varadkar said, in response to questioning by Social Democrats TD Cian O’Callaghan.

“At that point, the CSO updated its methodology.  The methodology the CSO uses, which is published on its website, was welcomed across the board at the time.

“I am a little bit disappointed, now that the figures are showing we are exceeding our targets, some people want to change the way we count them again.”

Varadkar said that the CSO was an independent body and that it was not subject to political influence.

“I think we should respect its work,” he added.