Ballymore is one of the biggest construction companies in Britain and Ireland these days - currently building the Guinness Quarter, Sea Gardens in Bray as well as numerous large projects in the UK including Nine Elms in London. I spoke to Pat Phelan – the Managing Director of Ballymore Ireland about what it is being-a-major-builder-these-days - and asked him about whether there are enough builders to meet demand. But i began by asking him whether it was cheaper to knock down an old building or renovate it?
Renovation is difficult, and there's no doubt about it. I mean, you know, if you look at where the cities need to go, even under our national planning framework, you know, the preference is to have 40% of that to be brownfield development. Brownfield development is more expensive. However, again, back to that word sustainability. There is an absolute intent from particular Dublin City Council now that, you know, building on Greenfield sites is not the way to go, certainly for the city itself and its environment. And there's an aspiration that we will bring older buildings back into use. So I think there's definitely going to be a push from the planners and even, I think, from occupiers, to bring some of the older stock back to the standards that we need for their sustainable buildings we're going to need. And to answer your question, it is, it is more expensive and to renovate, to renovate, yeah, that's going to have to be reflected in in in the rents that people pay. But if we are going to get serious about carbon, we you know, we need to do that. Capacity is a major issue, and we had someone on Newstalk breakfast yesterday who said that there aren't enough builders out there to meet the targets that we've set ourselves, especially for residential house building. Is that correct? I think currently, certainly, from ballymores perspective, there are. But again, you know the government correctly, and let's see what the new government looks like. Have set, you know, very high targets on the industry. You know, we've already probably doubled the capacity to be delivered in that delivered in the last four years. That has to double again. And you know, we will all have to work very closely with the colleges, with with our suppliers, to make sure that we do have the trades and the services that we need. And final question, what is the main blockage when it comes to building homes? Undoubtedly it is the availability of zoned and Service land. If you look at where I as the manager, director of ballymore, spend most of my time, it is trying to ensure that we have the basic raw material for our industry. And I am, you know, on record as getting worried about this. I think we have been building out the low hanging fruit over the last five years. I think Ireland and this came up in the election around the provision of infrastructure, we need to get very serious around where we're zoning our land and also how we're servicing that land.
