The rate of apartment construction has not significantly surpassed levels observed in recent years, despite a number of policy measures enacted by the Government.

Dublin City Council assistant chief executive Mick Mulhern, who heads the local authority’s housing division, said only half of apartment schemes granted permission in the city are proceeding to the development phase.

“In the city centre, 97 per cent of permitted schemes are apartments, and they’re hard to make work. Around 50 per cent of schemes aren’t starting,” Mulhern told the Beauchamps annual housing conference on Tuesday.

Minster for Housing James Browne has made a number of policy changes since he was appointed last year in a bid to stimulate apartment development. Rent controls have been reformed, a lower VAT rate put in place for new apartments and new apartments design standards are being devised.

Each policy was enacted to address industry concerns that apartment construction was economically unviable.

Deloitte chief economist Kate English told the Beauchamps event the number of houses being commenced has risen, but new apartment construction has not risen at the same rate.

In the first seven months of this year, more than 9,262 new houses were started nationwide, which was more than the 7,000 to 8,000 started annually in the same periods of 2021, 2022 and 2023.

By the end of July 2026, construction had begun on 6,987 apartments in Ireland, which was marginally more than the 6,638 started in the same period during 2022, but lower than the 7,591 and 7,697 commenced in 2021 and 2023 respectively.

“House commencements are back to where, and higher than, the levels that were commenced, but apartments aren’t,” English said.

She said this was due in part to the lack of investment in new stock by private rental sector investors as viability issues persisted.

Mulhern said there are close to 15,000 apartments under construction in central Dublin at present, which represents a fraction of units the council has granted permission.

“Definitely on the private rented side, we’re not seeing the scale of supply. That’s a sector that’s definitely underperforming relative to social housing and affordable purchase in the city.

“We see about a 50 per cent conversion rate of permitted schemes. So from those 30,000 apartments, we’ve got about 15,000 active schemes on site across the city at the moment.”

Mandy Johnston, head of Irish Institutional Property, a lobby group for the private rental sector, said while the Government has enacted a lot of positive changes to help apartment development, it still needs to “sell that message” to property investors.

“We might take the infrastructural changes or the Housing Activation Unit and fully understand the purpose, but does everybody? So maybe there’s a job to sell that message a little bit better.”

In the past 18 months Taoiseach Micheál Martin and Browne have urged local authorities to zone more land for housing development in a bid to scale up residential development to meet the Government target of delivering 300,000 new homes by the end of 2030.

Mulhern said Dublin City Council’s area now has enough land zoned for the construction of 74,000 homes.

Land Development Agency chief executive John Coleman told the Beauchamps conference that based on recent engagements with developers, there is a concern among developers of a lack of zoned land beyond 2030.

“If you talk to a lot of developers, particularly the bigger ones, they are not so much worried about the zero- to five-five year [pipeline] of land, but five- to 10-year pipeline. We’re all saying to ourselves, ‘Where are these sites going to be?’

“In our own land portfolio, we have Lissenhall, which is about 6,000 homes, and Clongriffin of about 5,000 homes. We need 10 more of those.”