Kildare tops house planning permission list for third quarter of 2020

Kildare looks set to be very busy on the house construction front over the next year or so if the number of planning permissions granted for new houses alone is a yardstick.

Figures for the third quarter of this year show the quantity of  Kildare permissions, in terms of the number of square metres (sqm), was the highest in the State.

Permission has been granted for 238,000 sqm of housing development.

Kildare was followed by Dublin city (211,000 sqm), Meath (171,000 sqm), Cork and county Cork (100,000 sqm).

Fingal came in at 47,000 sqm.

The Mid East region -Kildare, Meath, Wicklow and Louth -  was 469,000 sqm and Kildare comprised 50% of this total.

Nationally, the number of planning permissions granted for dwelling units in the third quarter of 2020 was 12,942, of which 7,214 were apartments and 5,728 were houses.

The CSO said on December 11 that for the country as a whole  the number of apartment units for which planning permission had been granted increased by 27.5% in the year since the third quarter of 2019. 

There was an annual increase of 16.1% in houses approved in the current quarter resulting in a total annual increase in dwellings of 22.2%.

The CSO said that in the first three quarters of 2020, 20,656 apartment units were granted planning permission, of which 16,752 or 81.1% were Strategic Housing Development (SHD)* applications and 3,904 or 18.9% were standard applications.

In the same period, 10,104 multi-development housing units were granted planning permission, with 4,803 or 47.5% Strategic Housing Development (SHD) applications and 5,301 or 52.5% standard applications. 

The region with the highest proportion of these permissions was Dublin (61.6%), followed by the Mid-East (25.1%). The Eastern and Midland Region (made up of Dublin, the Mid-East and the Midland regions) accounted for 88.1% of all apartment units granted. 

*The SHD process 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.