He deploys stats to show just how many homes are being provided to alleviate the emergency.

Frequently, he references Rebuilding Ireland, the Government’s strategic plan to provide 50,000 social homes by 2021, and the building of 25,000 private homes annually in the same time frame.

Targets, policies, speeches, are all concerned with how many homes can be built by 2021, in order to declare Rebuilding Ireland a success. The only problem, as it is now emerging, is that the minister’s stats may be all over the place.

Dr Lorcan Sirr, from the Dublin Institute of Technology, has conducted research that unravels some of the spin around the construction of homes. He wrote to every local authority in the State, under the Freedom of

Information Act, requesting figures for the number of homes built last year.

The replies were inconsistent, incomplete and often contradictory of official figures given out by the Department of Housing.

“It seems that nobody has legislative or administrative responsibility to calculate how many homes are actually being built each year,” Lorcan Sirr says.

When that is the case how can we know with any certainty how many homes are being constructed? Without that kind of fundamental information, in the middle of a housing crisis, there is an element of flying blind about the whole thing. And don’t forget many industries and companies rely on that basic information for their strategic planning.

For instance, until last year, ESB connections were being used as the figure that indicated how many houses were built. This method neglected the fact that included in the ESB figures were existing houses that required reconnection after more than two years out of commission.

Sirr’s research uncovered that the figures for ESB connections around the State were on average nearly twice the actual number of homes built. In Cork City in 2017, there were, according to Cork City Council, a total of 120 homes built.

Yet the ESB connections for the city were 212. Therefore until last year, there was, for many years, a wildly overestimated figure for the number of homes built in the city.

On the housing statistics section of the department’s website, ESB connections are highlighted, although there is acknowledgment that the figures include both connections after two years out of service and homes in unfinished estates left over from the 2000-2008 building boom.

“The department is collaborating with ESB networks and the Central Statistics Office to obtain additional, more grandular data from their datasets to get a further and deeper understanding of the various components of the overall connections data,” the website states.

Cork City was by no means an outlier in respect of how inaccurate ESB connection data is as far as new builds are concerned. For instance, Cork county recorded a total of 645 homes built in its area last year, but the number of ESB connections was 1,836, nearly three times the number of homes built.

Kerry’s discrepancy between the two was nearly as bad. There were 201 homes built and 519 connections. On average, the discrepancy was around 50%.

ESB connections were one of three methods cited by Eoghan Murphy last January as feeding into the department’s computation of how many homes were being built. The other two were planning permissions and commencement notices.

Both of these are also problematic when it comes to counting homes. Commencement notices are required by law to be lodged within two to three weeks of beginning construction on homes.

Lorcan Sirr says that noises from government and the department are now hinting that commencement notices will be used a primary source for computing homes built.

“There is a danger that they will start to use this other known inaccurate measure,” he says.

Commencement notices are future looking, an indication of something in the pipeline. All the methods they use are like that and show little willingness or desire to find out what is actually happening in real time. There’s a total lack of rigour around all this.

There are two specific problems with the use of commencement notices. In the first instance, they signal the beginning of construction rather than the completion.

In the case of a housing estate or apartment block, this means that using commencement notices as a signal for homes built in a particular year can be wildly inaccurate if the estate or block is not completed by the end of the year.

Do the same homes then get counted also the following year when they are connected up by electricity, or when a completion cert is presented?

The other problem with the use of commencement notices also pertains to estates and apartment blocks.

Typically, a large estate may be constructed in phases. But when phase one is started, the commencement notice is lodged for the whole estate, even though most of the homes will not be completed that year.

The Department of Housing appears to be unsure of the exact status of commencement notices. Under its “statistics” section on the departmental website it cites commencement notices and has this to say about phased developments.

“In the case of large developments it is practical to submit a CN for each phase. The number of units scheduled to commence under a specific phase should be recorded in the CN.”

So the phase notices “should” be recorded, but there is apparently no obligation, statutory or otherwise, to actually do so. The result is that commencement notices are well and good, but hardly a reliable indicator of how many homes are built in particular year.

Take commencement notices in Cork county, as issued to Lorcan Sirr under the Freedom Of Information Act. In 2017, 645 homes were completed yet the number of commencement notices were 794.

Yet in Limerick city and county, 305 homes were completed even though there were only 211 commencement notices. The latter case illustrates how it is possible that homes get counted twice in the issuing of commencement notices.

Once more the figures can be wildly inaccurate in not just overestimating construction, but in other ways actually underestimating it.

Instead of Commencement Notices, the obvious method to compute the number of homes built would be to

reference the completion certs, which are statutorily required under building control rules brought in in 2012.

Unfortunately, there are problems as one-off houses were exempt from having to furnish completion certs in 2015, after some strong lobbying against the new regulations.

Another method used to compute the number of homes built is planning permissions. This is again entirely flawed. The number of planning permissions registered also varies wildly from the number of homes built.

There are a number of reasons for these discrepancies, but one of the main ones is that planning permission is obtained, thereby increasing the value of the land on which building is proposed.

That land can then be held for years in some instances, until such time as the developer believes that the maximum return possible has been achieved.

The research conducted by Lorcan Sirr also sought to determine the number of Building Energy Rating (BER) certs issued in each local authority area. A BER cert is now compulsory for all new buildings, with a few exceptions, none of which are for dwelling homes.

Again, the figures suggest that something is not being done properly in this regard. For instance in Clare, where 155 homes were built in 2017, only 47 BER certs were issued.

In Waterford city and county only 104 BER certs were issued despite the completion of 192 homes.

“Nobody has responsibility to collate the real data and find out how many homes are actually being built,” Lorcan Sirr says.

“When that is the case how can we know whether or not the targets set out in Rebuilding Ireland are being met? How can we know exactly how many homes are being built? Without that kind of information, in the middle of a housing crisis, there is an element of flying blind about the whole thing.”

One obvious location in which to base a statutory register of homes built would be the Building Control Management System (BCMS) agency in the department, which collates all the paperwork associated with construction from commencement notices to fire certs and all other statutory requirements.

However, the BCMS does not appear to have a cast iron registry on actual units built, despite its access to information through the local authorities.

“Many of the local authorities are simply unsure of how exactly they are supposed to collate and lodge the numbers,” Sirr says.

“That’s apart altogether from a completely inconsistent approach to answering Freedom of Information requests about these matters. Some of them were very efficient, others simply not fit for purpose. Many of the local authorities are simply unsure of how exactly they are supposed to record housebuilding activity.”

He added: “That’s apart altogether from a completely inconsistent approach to answering Freedom of Information requests about these matters. Some of them were very efficient and responded within 48 hours with the numbers of houses built in their area.

“Others looked for time extensions for this most basic of information. And some councils refused FoI requests on the same basis as other councils granted them.

“Put together the whole thing could not inspire any confidence about the collection of data to show whether or not enough homes are being built. Without that, it’s difficult to see how policy can be properly formulated.”

Department’s figures don’t add up

The complete inability of state agencies or Government to record exactly how many homes are being built at a time of crisis was evident again recently.

The Department of Housing released statistics about the number of social homes built in the State in 2017.

According to the statistics, a total of 780 social homes were built. This is less than one fifth of what was promised in the 2016 Rebuilding Ireland action plan. Even at that the reliability of the statistics is questionable.

For instance, the figures make no mention of social homes that were taken out of commission in order to rebuild or refurbish.

In Dublin’s Charlemont St, there was such a rebuild but it is unclear whether the decommissioned units were taken into consideration in calculating the total number of builds in the city.

The figure for Cork City is in complete conflict with the figure given to Dr Lorcan Sirr under a Freedom of Information request. The department’s statistics point to 123 social homes being built in Cork last year. The figures supplied to Sirr were of 120 homes in total, public and private, being constructed.

The discrepancies were highlighted by housing analysts and opposition politicians.

“These figures show just how far off the mark the Government is when it makes claims about the number of social and affordable homes being built,” said Social Democrats TD Catherine Murphy.

The Department of Housing’s own figures for last year show that local authorities built a total of 780 houses. That’s a long way off the 1,014 which Minister Eoghan Murphy said last week that the local authorities had built in 2017. It beggars belief that the minister does not appear to even be in command of the facts on the ground.

In reality, Eoghan Murphy is in command of some of the facts, but never has the phrase “lies, lies, and damn statistics” been more apt than in the computation of homes built.

In response to questions from this newspaper, the department stated there is as yet no definitive measurement of homes built.

There is not a single source of data which lists all dwellings and which records precisely when they were built, although there are systems such as Geodirectory which lists all buildings including those built for residential use.

Geodirectory is a system primarily used to determine location and is not used by the department to compute definitive domestic buildings.

The department does recognise the problem in computing accurate figures and, to that end, last year set up the Housing Data Analytics group, which is attempting to come up with a definitive method.

The group is made up of representatives from across the construction and statistics areas to devise a way forward. It has not yet delivered any output.

“The issue is technically complex, but good progress has been made and we expect to see improved analysis on foot of this work by the end of this quarter,” said a department spokesperson.

Surprisingly, the ESB is not represented on the body, but the spokesperson said the ESB is working with the CSO to attempt to improve its capacity to compute new builds.