Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 18 November 2025
631. Deputy Ken O'Flynn asked the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage the current average house price and average monthly rent in Cork city and Cork county; the change in these figures in the past 12 months; and how he expects the new strategy to impact these trends. [63897/25]
View answerThe Central Statistics Office (CSO) publishes the Residential Property Price Index (RPPI) on a monthly basis on it's website at: https://data.cso.ie/table/HPM09, with data disaggregated nationally by type of residential property. House price indices are also provided for seven regions outside of Dublin including the South-West (Cork and Kerry).
The Residential Tenancies Board (RTB) and Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) produce a quarterly Rent Index report to track price developments in the Irish private rental market. This can be found on the RTB website at: https://rtb.ie/data-insights/rtb-research-reports/rtb-esri-rent-index/.
Government is focused on increasing the national housing stock and ensuring a suitable range of housing, across tenure types, is available to all. The new housing plan Delivering Homes, Building Communities builds on the foundations laid under Housing for All and will deliver a minimum of 300,000 new homes, including record levels of new social homes, an ambitious nationwide Starter Homes Programme and the provision of additional delivery in the areas of Purpose Built Student Accommodation (PBSA) and vacant and derelict properties brought back into use, as set out in the Programme for Government. This will have a meaningful impact on the housing market, increased supply will help dampen house price growth and ease affordability challenges across the country, and ensure that everyone has a range of housing options available to them, whether they want to buy a house, rent one, or are in need social housing.
The Cost Rental Equity Loan (CREL) funding Scheme is available to Approved Housing Bodies to provide affordable rented accommodation to those who meet the income eligibility requirements for cost rental homes. The nature of the Cost Rental model means that Cost Rental homes are advertised and made available at a certain rent level, which is needed to cover the costs of delivery and provision. Cost rents must be at least 25% below prevailing market rents.
Applications for CREL are regularly received by the Housing Agency, who manage the Scheme on my Department's behalf, and as such the assessment and approval of applications on hand is continual.
To date in 2025, 42 projects (3,232 units) have been approved across 15 different local authority areas for delivery from 2025 to 2029. This includes 1,024 units for delivery in Cork City, and the first CREL project in Cork County, which is due to deliver 40 units.
Over 150 CREL units have already been delivered in Cork City since the inception of CREL to the end of Q2 of 2025.
For reasons of commercial sensitivity, details of specific proposals cannot be released. However, my Department can confirm that it continues to work with the Approved Housing Body sector to deliver cost rental housing at scale.
