Key Takeaways
| Item | What’s Happening | Why It Matters |
|---|---|---|
| Apartment construction is rising | Large developers can deliver thousands of urban apartments now | Momentum is real, but uneven |
| Market power is concentrated | A few PLC developers dominate delivery | Fragile system, low resilience |
| SME builders are still locked out | Finance and planning barriers persist | Rural and small-town shortages deepen |
| Policy favours scale | VAT, density and viability reforms suit large schemes | Small builders see little benefit |
| Affordability remains unresolved | Many apartments exceed €400,000 | Demand remains constrained |
| Direct State building is STILL missing | The State still relies heavily on private firms | Public delivery offers certainty |
| Apple tax fund is pivotal | Capital exists for a structural housing reset | Opportunity window is narrow |
According to recent news, Irish developer Cairn Homes currently has around 4,000 apartments under construction across multiple schemes in Ireland, with a forecast that sales revenue will exceed €1 billion in 2026. Cairn expects its home sales this year to be between approx. €1.02 billion and €1.05 billion, and this is driven largely by strong demand for apartments. Irish Times
Government incentives such as VAT cuts on completed apartments and new guidelines to reduce apartment sizes are helping developers like Cairn push building schemes on a large scale.
At first glance, this appears encouraging.
While this level of activity is indeed encouraging, it does not do much to solve the housing crisis on its own, especially when:
- Apartment prices remain high (€400k+)
- Delivery timelines for these apartments are long
- and the Irish State continues to remain structurally dependent on large private developers to hit public housing goals.
But housing policy is not judged by momentum alone. It is judged by who delivers, where homes are built, at what price, and how resilient the system is when conditions change.
My Case for Large Developers – What Is Working
To be fair, Ireland desperately needs more houses and apartments.
Right now, large developers such as Glenveagh and Cairn bring attributes that small and medium builders may currently lack. For example:
- Balance sheet strength to absorb extended planning delays and judicial reviews
- Access to institutional finance that has been largely unavailable to smaller builders since the 2008 housing crash
- Capacity to deliver dense urban schemes that are more aligned with government policy
- Predictability in negotiating social, cost-rental, and affordable units
From a government perspective, I can understand how working with a small number of financially healthy developers can simplify delivery at a time when the housing emergency is extreme.
In that sense, the recent increase in large-scale apartment building work does not seem accidental. It is clearly the product of deliberate policy choices aimed at restoring credibility to a sector that collapsed after 2008.
But Let’s not Forget. “Under Construction” Is Not the Same as “Delivered”.
I say this because a recurring issue in conversations around housing is the conflation of starts, pipelines, and sales forecasts with actual housing outcomes.
- Homes “under construction” may take 18–36 months to complete
- Housing projects can stall or stop completely due to finance, labour shortages, or appeals
- Apartment completions, not commencements, are what relieve pressure
But with that said, it is highly unlikely that a company such as Cairn will be unable to deliver in such a climate. In fact, I would argue that such a housing climate favours them a lot better than small and medium developers.
I am not saying all this is not to dismiss current housing activity, but to stress that headline figures (i.e, 4000 apartments) can overstate certainty in a system that is still exposed to severe risk.
Apartment Development Concentration – A Structural Problem in Ireland.
Ireland’s residential construction sector very highly concentrated right now.
Only a handful of big players can deliver apartments at scale, with Cairn and Glenveagh being the biggest dogs in the yard.
Once upon a time, hundreds of small and medium builders could deliver incremental supply across towns and villages. But today, after being exposed by the 2008 housing crash, banks have been very cautious when it comes to giving out loans to small builders. That is why delivery today is dominated by a handful of PLC-scale firms operating primarily in cities.
This concentration can have unintended consequences:
- Reduced competition for land – which leads to higher site prices and fewer opportunities for SME builders to enter the market. Ultimately, this pushes up the cost of new homes.
- Less diversity in housing types – resulting in a narrower range of homes being delivered, limited choice for buyers and renters, and a mismatch between what is built and what different household types actually need.
- Increased exposure to systemic shocks – meaning that when market confidence weakens, a small number of large projects can all stall simultaneously, and cause sudden drops in housing output.
- Weak supply outside high-demand urban zones – leaving rural towns undersupplied, which can accelerate population pressure in cities.
The irony is that the system now depends on the very actors whose withdrawal in 2008 helped precipitate the current crisis.
Why Small and Medium Builders Should Matter More in Ireland.
Small and medium builders are not just an ideal in my mind. There is a lot of international evidence that consistently shows that SME developers are essential to a stable housing system.
They:
- Deliver housing better in remote, rural and regional areas
- Respond to local demand, not institutional yield targets
- Support the stabilisation of house prices through dispersed supply
In Ireland, however, SME builders consistently face systemic barriers:
- Limited access to development finance from banks
- Planning delays that are disproportionate to the project size
- Infrastructure costs that is being pushed onto individual sites
- Inconsistent capacity in local authorities
As a result, vast swathes of rural Ireland remain undersupplied. This is not because demand is absent, but because delivery mechanisms are broken.
Also, the 2025 apartment size rule changes mostly benefit builders who can build at scale.
Just to refresh, in 2025, the government reduced the minimum size for new apartments from 37 sq.m. to 32 sq. m., to allow for more apartments to be built. My Little Home.
In technical terms, this reform appears to be succeeding.
- But while smaller apartments may lower per-unit costs in theory, there is no guarantee that those savings will be passed on to the new homeowner.
Also, in order to take advantage of these potentially lower costs, you need to build in bulk. That means that only large developers can enjoy any real benefits here as they can:
- Spread fixed costs across hundreds of units
- Reuse designs and other procurement frameworks
- Absorb regulatory issues since they have huge balance sheets
Small builders, unfortunately cannot.
The result here is a two-tier system – one that accelerates large urban schemes while leaving smaller projects to rot.
BOTTOM LINE.
Make no mistake, from an administrative perspective, I can understand why the government is making policies that clearly favour large developers over SMEs.
- Large developers are more predictable, easier to negotiate Part V (social housing quotas) with, and less likely to collapse mid-project.
So my real issue here isn’t that Cairn is clearly benefiting more than others. My real issue is that there is no significant government alternative that exists strictly for SMEs.
PS. The HBFI does exist, but allocating only €200 million per year for all SMEs is an absolute joke, especially when we know that the housing crisis is indeed an emergency.
Why the State Needs to Build Directly
All the above leads to my central question – who should build when the market cannot deliver homes affordably?
The answer, historically and internationally, is the State.
Ireland once built social and affordable homes consistently, and at scale. However, the capacity was nearly dismantled after the 2008 housing crash, and since then, the State has relied more heavily on private developers to provide both social and affordable housing.
The Apple Tax Fund – A Once-Off Reset Opportunity.
The €14 billion Apple tax windfall, collected in full in 2025, represents a rare chance to correct structural weaknesses in the housing system.
With just a little bit of political willpower, this money can be specifically allocated to resolve the housing crisis – which is indeed an emergency. If used strategically, it could:
- Empower local councils to buy, restore and own easily-repairable vacant & derelict buildings (there are currently 80,000+ vacant homes in Ireland)
- Establish programmes that allow the state to build social housing directly through SMEs, while using MMC & modular techniques
- Improve Uisce Eireann’s infrastructure by contributing to its Leakage Programme.
- Introduce more loan schemes through the HBFI that activate the real sleeping giants, i,e small & medium builders.
- Improve the planning system by reducing judicial reviews and making sure that local councils are properly staffed.
- Reduce reliance on the private rental market to stabilise house and rent prices nationwide
Unsurprisingly, Ireland does not need to choose between large developers and small builders.
A resilient housing system requires:
- Large developers for dense urban delivery
- SME builders for rural and town-scale supply
- Direct State construction for certainty and affordability
At present, only one of these pillars is working as intended.
