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THE COMPLETION OF modular housing has been held up by issues with sites, Ireland’s state architect has said.
A number of rapid-build homes are being constructed at sites across the country to house Ukrainian refugees.
The first houses, at a site in Cork, are due to be finished later this month, state architect Ciaran O’Connor told an Oireachtas committee.
In June last year, the government approved the plans for 500 modular units to house 2,000 Ukrainians with Minister for Integration Roderic O’Gorman saying that the first of the homes would be completed in November, and all 500 in place in late February or early March this year.
Then in October, Patrick O’Donovan, the Minister of State with responsibility for the OPW, said that it was expected that the first homes would be complete by “January and February” of 2023 – but this has now been pushed back until June.
Last month Taoiseach Leo Varadkar urged a “reality check” on the potential of modular homes to address the Republic’s housing crisis, saying that while they would help increase the housing stock, they would take time to build.
The Joint Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage heard from a number of expert witnesses on modern methods of construction today.
O’Connor said the government last June requested 500 units, later increased to 700, which he said are in the process of being completed with the first to be handed over in two weeks.
He said the first homes completed will be in Cork on 18 May, followed by Claremorris, Thurles and Cavan.
“We’ve learnt a lot in that process, we have brought an industry that was at its infancy, from junior infants to secondary school, and the question is where does it go hereafter,” he said.
O’Connor said the houses are delivered fully fitted out and plugged into services such as electricity and sewerage.
He said the biggest issue has been with the sites, saying homes would have been finished earlier if sites had been available sooner.
He said the industry is ready to stand on its legs but needs a pipeline of work, secure funding and a commitment that it is part of the wider context.
Fianna Fáil TD Paul McAuliffe said he saw potential in rapid-build housing, but expressed concern around cost and speed.
Questioned about Varadkar’s comments on the speed of completion, O’Connor said 85% of the sites had been “unsuitable for building”.
“The units were the easy bit, the hard bit was getting sites fully serviced and getting them all ready, because when you have the unit all you do [is] place it into position, but you can’t put it into position unless there is a road and all the other services are there,” he said.
“The sites that we got often had significant issues and they had to be resolved, there were one or two sites that were straightforward but most of the other sites were quite tricky sites to resolve, but they have been resolved.
“Of the sites that were offered to us, 85% were unsuitable for building … site conditions like 45-degree slopes on certain sites, there were certain sites that had no services and were so remote that you would have to set up a separate bus service to bring people to the nearest village. So that process was slower than we had hoped.”
Mark Carlin, managing director of Coillte Forest, briefed the committee on the advantages of building with wood, including mitigating climate change.
He said only 25% of houses in Ireland are built with timber frames, far behind Scotland at close to 80% and Scandinavia, which is higher still.
He called for building regulations to be changed and low-carbon materials to be prioritised.
“Ireland has opportunity to be at the cutting edge of the next timber-building revolution,” Carlin said.
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How about changing the headline to “Dublin house prices mercifully normalizing to a more affordable level”, or do you own an investment property you’re trying to flip?
Bang on.
you know they own daft.ie in here and that is why they show it as a panic and chaos when prices drop by .5% as if it is chaotic
Its the same over at the Indo- house prices are always ‘soaring’ even when the increase has been less than 1%
I am a landlord of several properties but I don’t see why builders want sell houses at at 500% of the building cost.
The retail trade in Britain was blown away by efficient Germans and Scandinavians who take a small profit on each unit and thereby ate into the profits of overpriced monopolists.
The British retail trade is reeling backwards under the Germanic onslaught.
.
Please Aldi and Lidl and Ikea.
Start building houses in Ireland.
There was a radio interview few months ago can’t remember guys name but he said get international firms to build maybe 1000 houses at a time on a contract with the state like the motorways were done. State sells enough to cover cost The rest social
Location, Location Location …Land , Land Land, The state can compulsorily purchase land to widen a road but not for homes! .. like Holland and many other countries. Until this is sorted then the Irish, their kids and grandchildren will continue to be abused by financial predators for generations.
NK. Are you sure. I find that hard to believe.
NAMA
Ireland will never have affordable homes as long as we have open borders and the government has a policy of giving citizenships to the entire world in order to constantly increase the population. The government likes high house prices. They like that most of your income goes towards inflating the price of property while your other debts are passed on.
They like to contstantly increase the population because it is the only way they know to keep the ponzi scheme economy going.
If the economy was not a ponzi scheme and each generation did not have to be bigger than the last to pay of the last generation’s debts then a declining or stable population would seen as beneficial. We would have more resources to share, larger homes at cheaper prices but the government’s policy is to get people to pay grossly inflated house prices and increase the population so the next generation pays of your other debts. This of course is not sustainable. Ponzi schemes are illegal for a very good reason. They inevitably collapse.
What we need is an economy where over the course of the average person’s life, they earn enough to completely support themselves including, healthcare and retirement and house prices are dramatically reduced to compensate. They are way above their brick and mortar value.
We need 1m net migrants to fund the pension gap in 25 yrs time. You’re clearly a moron if you think immigration is a problem. It is the only way we can hope we do not end up totally impoverished.
Then you need more immigrants to fund their pension. It’s a ponzi scheme. How about we just have a sustainable economy where people’s earnings cover their costs and prices adjust to compensate.
@WilliamG: In Ireland the Local Government (Planning and Development) Act 1963 helped to make building land scarce and expensive in a country that has the lowest population density in the European Union. Little surprise which Political Parties supported this …
In the early 1970s an official Irish report (called the Kenny Report) recommended that rezoned Irish land should be capped at 25% above the agricultural value. This was not implemented – no surprise which Political Parties made sure this was well and truly “buried” ….
Irish, their kids and grandchildren will continue to be abused by financial predators as long as they continue to leave their brains at home when they go to vote!
NK. You didn’t point out where a compulsory PO couldn’t be obtained for housing. The other maters were probably unconstitutional.
Now all the Central Bank need to do is not bow to pressure to reverse the rules. 20% up front is fair and its because of the lack such rules we got in this mess.
To put things into perspective…An English commentator recently wrote about his property experience. He bought a flat in central London for 9000 pounds in the mid seventies when he was earning about 7000 pounds a year. Same flat now worth between 700/800 thousand and the guy doing the same job as the writer at that time earns 25000 pounds pa now. The younger generation in Ireland and UK have been shafted by the political establishment to protect their own asses. Come the election I will be asking every ff/fg/lab canvasser about theiir shameful part in pricing young people out of the housing market and decent accommodation. How on earth can anyone on average wages or even higher buy a house now, especially in our cities? Another disaster lurks around the corner and we need to wake up l.
Were interest rates something like 20% back then? Are we really comparing like with like?
I could not disagree with you more Valthebear, you say the younger generation has been shafted by the political establishment, this is not the case in fact EVERY generation have been shafted by them
A quick simple investigation by some firm should be able to tell us what’s broken because something is.
So that’s good news..yeah?
Not for the firm who owns daft and the journal.
Prices are not going down and down or being hit and hit as they say. they are up 7% this year which is an insane rise. Bad research as usual and very biased reporting
The firm that owns daft make the same money if the property is 50k or 5 mill.
ads clicks hyped activity gives them cash so it helps to have a market jumping in extremes in terms of IT and journal click stories etc
Maybe the journal, but not Daft.
Both are owned by the same company
Now if the central bank could tackle the mortgage rates..over 2% higher than the average eurozone…
Well – the costs to banks of mortgages are lower in Europe. In particular, when people stop paying their mortgage – they are rapidly evicted. In ireland it takes years. This cost (of keeping people in houses they can’t afford), is spread among the other customers of the bank. Choose which you prefer – people in their homes, or cheaper mortgages.
Good. Enough with this overpriced nonsense on a little island west of Europe.
If a house costs many multiples of your yearly income you are in for a lifetime of debt, and all the domestic disharmony that comes with it.. Over quarter of a million for a mediocre semi-d almost anywhere in Dublin. Irelands Ponzi scheme based economy is alive and well.
That will change, prices in Dublin will start going up again,
They won’t if no one can afford them!
The end of the year has seen banks hit their exceptions budgets & in some cases ask buyers not to draw down on their mortgage until the New Year. The new exceptions budget will be available in Jan so prices are likely to go up again
Never heard that before Nora, interesting to see if your right.
Always heard that just before Christmas was a good time to buy a house, a seller would like to be able to sit down to Christmas with a deal done and would settle for a smaller price.
Nothing much will happen until the spring.
That’s not right Nora, it’s actually the opposite. They lent outside the rules heavily in the start of 2015 and arse scrambling to draw down before 2016 to balance the books.
http://m.rte.ie/news/business/2015/1106/740159-kbc-mortgages/ and BOI had spent their exceptions budget by October too
That’s just KBC, they were late. The other banks shot their load early in the year and were putting big pressure to close sales to balance out the 15%
Still over expensive. Have to get back to costs before Bertie’s calamity boom.
This is great news!…. Why does every journalists in this country insist on writing “oh no, property prices are slowing”, headlines?? Muppets
Why does this story read like its bad news? Finally a hint of stability in the market.
Homes, whether mortgagedor rented, are excessively expensive relative to real after tax net incomes.
Whether mortgaged or rented, too expensive.
Mortar, invented in 1784 by J. Aspdin: sand, cement and water … No Platinum in it!
Residential property prices in Ireland are determined by supply not matching demand, site costs, (development land is a speculative market), free market speculative pressures and over supply of credit to some applicants but not to others.
Residential property values are a function of housing as a speculative commodity.
The market value of housing relative to real incomes has increased over time and excessively so.
One of the odd features of the Irish property market is that residential values are generally not a function of achievable rent multiples. In other countries the rent per square metres can be easily established and then the rent is capitalised.
The banks are delighted with the current position. They can now push ahead in 2016 with repossessions of buy to let’s and owner occupied homes.
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