Press Statement

Preasráiteas

13 March 2020

Go to release: Planning Permissions Quarter 4 2019

The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has today (13 March 2020) published data in relation to planning permissions for 2019.

Commenting on the data, Statistician Sorcha O’Callaghan said: “Planning permissions were granted for 20,582 apartment units, compared with 9,138 units in 2018, an increase of 125%. This number is still lower than the peak of 32,077 apartment units granted in 2004.

Planning permissions were granted for 19,670 houses in 2019, compared with 19,964 in 2018, a decrease of 1.5%. This number has decreased for the first time since 2012. The number of multi-development houses granted permission has decreased by 3.0% compared with 2018. The number of one-off houses granted permission has increased by 2.6% since 2018.

In 2019, for the first time, more apartments than houses were granted planning permission. In 2019, 62.4% of the apartments granted planning permission were via Strategic Housing Development (SHD) applications. This is where applications for developments of at least 100 residential units or 200 plus student bed spaces can be made directly to An Bord Pleanála. Permissions were granted for 3,965 new houses and 12,841 new apartment units via SHD applications in 2019.

The total number of planning permissions granted for all developments was 27,921 compared with 26,580 in 2018, an increase of 5%. Of this, almost 26% of permissions were for new dwellings, 30% for other new constructions and 44% for extensions, alterations and conversions." 

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