Central Bank: Irish housing completions set to fall as housing crisis continues

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With the embodied carbon of construction estimated to take up 14 per cent of Ireland's emissions, one powerful way of cutting Ireland's emissions is to build less stuff. The new figures from the Central Bank suggest that in the housing sector at least, that's precisely what Ireland's doing.

The bank pointed not to energy costs or material shortages but to Ireland's planning system: homes completed so far this year took an average of four years from planning lodgement to completion, twice as long as a decade ago, with delays linked to infrastructure bottlenecks including water and electricity connections.

The bank also noted that Middle East-driven energy price rises have added to inflation this year but did not link this directly to the housing slowdown.

But Ireland is in a housing crisis, so only the most callous person would greet a drop in housing numbers with unbridled joy. The trick is: how to house as many people as possible, while putting as little CO2 into the atmosphere in the process — and ensuring low emissions across their life. In addition to accelerating ways of radically reducing the embodied carbon of new homes, that means getting behind adaptive reuse too.

Indeed, that 14 per cent figure may be past its sell-by date: it comes from a 2022 UCD/IGBC report. National embodied carbon totals fluctuate significantly based on construction activity. For instance, 90,000 homes were built in 2006 when the Celtic Tiger was ravaging Ireland's landscape, but just 4,575 units were added in 2013, which would invariably have led to an enormous drop in emissions from construction. Which just goes to show that when it comes to cutting embodied carbon, you can't beat a good recession.