The State needs to build about 35,000 new homes every year to begin making a dent in the housing crisis, Minister for Housing Simon Coveney has indicated.
He was responding to stark figures from the 2016 census published on Thursday, which revealed that total housing stock grew by just 8,800 (0.4 per cent) in the five years up to last year.
The Central Statistics Office’s first thematic report of the housing results from the census last year also revealed the first increase in the average number of people in a household in 50 years.
The overall rate of home ownership has declined to its lowest since 1971 and over 62,000 holiday homes are lying empty in the State.
The figures show a total of 2,003,645 houses and apartments were enumerated in the 2016 census in April last year.
Of these, 1,697,665 were occupied by people usually resident in the State. There were 183,312 vacant houses and apartments, while the census also counted 62,148 vacant holiday homes.
Vacancy rate
The overall vacancy rate in 2016, including holiday homes, was 12.3 per cent. If holiday homes are excluded from the housing stock, the vacancy rate drops to 9.4 per cent.
Mr Coveney said the figures painted a “stark story”. There were “fundamental structural problems” in the house-building sector and it was his job to fix it, he said.
The Government had a new housing strategy and there were already benefits being seen from that, he said.
The willingness was there but we could not ignore the fact that over the last six or seven years we had “a broken economy”, at the heart of which was a broken construction sector, the Minister added.
Speaking on RTÉ's News at One, he said the State was "rebuilding, literally, from a very low base".
“It’s going to take some time to deliver results on that but it’s happening.”
Mr Coveney noted the current target was to build 25,000 new houses a year and he believed that would be reached by the end of next year or by 2019. But he believed the figure needed to be closer to 35,000 because of the upturn in the economy and population growth.
He said an increase in the number of affordable rental properties was also needed.
Senior statistician Deirdre Cullen of the CSO said the report provided "a clear picture of some of the main developments in the Irish housing landscape over the past five years, including new analysis of vacant properties, such as type of dwelling and distance to the nearest town".
Slowdown
The census figures revealed “a considerable slowdown in housing stock growth”, the CSO said.
Total housing stock grew by just 8,800 (0.4 per cent) between 2011 and 2016, in “sharp contrast to the growth of 225,232 dwellings recorded between 2006 and 2011”.
Just 33,436 householders who completed the census last year indicated their home was built between 2011 and 2016 – an average of just 6,687 per year.
In contrast, 431,763 households stated that their dwelling was built between 2001 and 2010, an average of 43,176 per year.
Almost half of new homes were built in rural areas. In Dublin city and suburbs, from a total of 422,182, only 6,598 people (1.6 per cent) indicated that their house or apartment was constructed from 2011 onwards.
Nearly 10 per cent of the population is in accommodation with less than one room per person.
There were 95,013 permanent households with more people than rooms, accommodating close to 10 per cent of the population, at an average of 4.7 persons per household.
This is a 28 per cent rise on the equivalent number in 2011 (73,997).
The largest increase in average household size between 2011 and 2016 was in Fingal (2.92 to 3.03), followed by Dublin city, where the average number of people in a private home increased from 2.40 to 2.48.
Fingal, Meath, Kildare and south Dublin had at least three people per household on average in April 2016.
The CSO said the number of owner-occupied households fell between 2011 and 2016 (from 1,149,924 to 1,147,552), causing the overall home ownership rate to drop from 69.7 per cent to 67.6 per cent, a rate last seen in 1971.
Rural areas
The rate in rural areas fell from 84 per cent in 2011 to 82 per cent in 2016 while the percentage of urban homes owned (outright or with a loan) has fallen from 61.6 per cent to 59.2 per cent in 2016.
Renting is more common than owning before age 35, the figures show.
The average weekly rent paid to private landlords in April last year was €199.92, up from €171.19 (16.8 per cent) in 2011.
The highest growth in rent was in Dublin city which increased by almost 30 per cent, while rises in excess of 20 per cent were also recorded in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown (26.2 per cent), Fingal (22.8 per cent), south Dublin (22.7 per cent) and Kildare (20.3 per cent).
Census 2016 also revealed significant changes within the owner-occupier categories, ie homes owned outright or with a loan or mortgage, the CSO said.
Responding to the census figures on Thursday, the Simon Communities said the picture painted by the report was “a troubling one”.
The homelessness charity said the Government’s plan to tackle the housing crisis was moving far too slowly.
National spokeswoman Niamh Randall said: “A supply of decent, affordable homes will prevent more people from becoming homeless and ensure that people can leave homelessness behind.”
“In the absence of sufficient supply of social housing, the private sector is not capable of delivering the housing needed to respond, given the sheer scale of the problem. The numbers of people pushed into homelessness and housing insecurity continues to rise,” Ms Randall said.