Builders forcecast housing shortage for Galway!

Date Published: 02-Feb-2011

The construction industry has released surprising new statistics which suggest County Galway is facing a chronic shortage of new homes over the next six years – a huge contradiction to figures released last year which identified an oversupply of almost 7,000 homes.

A builders’ group has suggested developers should now be sitting down with financiers and policymakers to plan new housing estates.

The Construction Industry Federation’s ‘West Region Future Housing Demand Study’ claims there are 629 new and vacant homes in County Galway, a further 305 ‘weathered’ (at an advanced stage) and 136 under other stages of construction.

Using the figures collated last October by the Department of the Environment and projections under the Regional Planning Guidelines, the CIF believe that 4,871 units will be required between by 2016 – which suggests a shortage of 3,901 homes within less than six years.

The figures are in stark contrast to a report released last August by the National Institute for Regional and Spatial Awareness (NIRSA) entitled ‘A Haunted Landscape: Housing and Ghost Estates in Post-Celtic Tiger Ireland’, which found an estimated oversupply of 6,975 homes in County Galway.

Martin Whelan, Director of Research & Communications with the CIF told the Connacht Tribune: “These homes were physically counted by the Department of the Environment, other suggestions that there are 200,000 to 300,000 empties in the country have been totally dismissed at this stage. They were based on desktop studies.

See full story in this week’s Connacht Tribune.