Revealed: only 8,800 homes, not 51,329 homes, built in past 5 years

According to The Irish Times website this afternoon, it seems the number of "completed homes" is a lie, and a very convenient one for the current government, because housing completion statistics are based on ESB connections, not on actual... houses completed. You couldn't invent this stuff:

Housing completions data are the responsibility of the Department of Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government and are calculated by way of connections to the electricity grid. This has always been the case. The economics community has always had concerns about these data but it appears that these issues have only come to public prominence in recent times due to the scale of the housing crisis.
Unrealistic picture
There has been a growing list of evidence to suggest that the electricity connections are providing an unrealistic picture of the level of new supply coming on the market. Most prominently, this week’s census data revealed that the housing stock increased by only 8,800 units in the five-year period to April 2016. Over the same period, there were completions or, more accurately, 51,329 electricity connections. Some of the difference can be explained by homes becoming obsolete but cannot explain the full difference...

Source: Irish housing data reveals return of ‘leprechaun economics’

MissShihTzu

So what were the developers doing with the tax money they got for building the houses?

astrofool

I'd imagine most of what has become available in the last 5 years was completion of existing projects that were already partially or wholly built.

This year will probably be the first where fully new buildings starts coming online.

Samuel T. Cogley

Jesus AGS 'statistical analysis' is going on everywhere! :pac:

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Samuel T. Cogley wrote: »

Jesus AGS 'statistical analysis' is going on everywhere! :pac:

You bet me to it