This article is from page 2 of the 2008-03-25 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 2 JPG
THE number of house starts in Clare to date this year is down 80 per cent on the corresponding period last year.
Providing further evidence of the decline in the local construction in- dustry, Homebond confirmed that the number of house starts registered in Clare for the month of January was only four. Representing 75 per cent of the market, Homebond confirmed that the figure for January of last year NF ISO
The number of new house starts in February did pick up and 17 start-ups
were recorded. However, the total for the first two months of this year was a meagre 21, compared to 98 for last year – a drop of 80 per cent.
Separate statistics provided by Clare County Council highlight a more long-term decline in housing construction.
In response to a motion tabled by Cllr Christy Curtin (Ind) for the council’s March meeting, the coun- cil’s director for planning, Berna- dette Kinsella, said that the number of applications for one-off homes in Clare had almost halved in the past four years.
Ms Kinsella revealed that 1,584
applications were lodged for one- off homes in 2004 but last year the number dropped to 844.
In 2006, some 828 applications were lodged and 960 in 2005. The number of applications for this year is on a par with last year. It stands at 139 for the first two months.
Separate figures supplied by the Department of the Environment for the first two months of this year show that there has been a 30 per cent drop in house completions compared to the first two months of last year.
The figures show that for the first two months of this year, 252 houses were completed in Clare, with 100
completed in January and 152 com- pleted in February.
This compares to 359 homes com- pleted for the first two months of last year, with 122 homes completed in January and 237 homes in February, giving a total of 359.
In total last year, according to Homebound, there were 784 houses starts in Clare, a drop of 37.5 per cent on the 1,258 house starts in Clare in 2006.
Nationally, there were 75,000 hous- es built last year. Ennis auctioneer Philip O’Reilly said recently that he believed that this would drop to 40,000 this year.