Local councils are set to zone enough land over the next 15 years to facilitate the construction of a million new homes, the head of policy and research with homebulder Glenveagh has said.

Kevin Dillon said updated local authority development plans will lift the State’s residential land bank to approximately 25,000 hectares by 2040.

Combined with new housing density guidelines, this is enough land to support an extra million homes, he told the Dublin Economics Workshop’s annual policy conference in Wexford.

The State’s 31 city and local authorities have been directed by Government to zone more land to accelerate the supply of housing.

“This zoning process is currently underway across all 31 local authorities and should be completed by 2030,” Dillon said.

“That will make the price of land cheaper which in turn will make the price of homes cheaper,” he said.

Glenveagh projects the total stock of occupied homes in the Republic to double by 2065 (to approximtely four million homes) with that growth front-loaded out to 2040 when demand is highest.

Dillon described the increase in the State’s capital budget for housing over the last 10 years as “extraordinary”, noting it has risen from €432 million in 2016 to over €5 billion this year.

This equates to 2.3 per cent of national income compared to a European average of 0.4 per cent.

“We are investing more and building more (in per capita terms) than any other country in Europe,” he said.

Glenveagh is “bullish” about the outlook, believing there will be over 40,000 new homes built this year, Dillon said.

In its recent half-year results, the company upgraded its own home delivery targets to 2,900 this year and 3,100 in 2027.

“The policy mix is right. The (State) spending is making a difference and that’s having a multiplier effect on private spending,” he said.

Dillon said the company’s “biggest frustration” was getting clearance certifications to use various modern methods of construction (MMC).

MMC is an umbrella term for innovative construction techniques but generally refers to construction that takes place off site.

Dillon said about 40 per cent of a typical Glenveagh home is built off site using MMC but the company wants to get that to 70 per cent. MMC makes costs “far more predictable,” he said.

In a module on the energy transition, Kieran O’Brien from the Irish Academy of Engineering told the conference that about 20 per cent of the natural gas consumed by Irish households was fracked gas coming from the US.

“This argument about fracked gas is absolutely silly,” O’Brien said.

Ireland used to have a strict ban on importing fracked gas and is still the only country in Western Europe without any LNG (liquefied natural gas) importing infrastructure.

But the Government has changed its stance in the face of the current energy security crisis and now intends to build an LNG terminal in the Shannon estuary.

US president Donald Trump on his trip to Ireland urged the State to buy more LNG from the US.

O’Brien claimed the Government had repeatedly set unrealistic targets for switching to renewables.

Ireland’s initial climate action plan in 2019 set a target of generating 3,500 MW (Megawatts) from offshore wind by 2030.

“A year later it was 5,000 MW, two years later it was 7,000 MW,” he said. But to date the State generates no power from offshore wind and is not expected to do so until at least 2031.

“This is the kind of crazy targets we’re setting without any plan to get there,” he said.

Harry Williamson from the Department of Finance told the conference that his department’s research indicated about 63 per cent of jobs in Ireland were in occupations that would be affected by AI (artificial intelligence).