The tánaiste and enterprise minister Leo Varadkar has unveiled Enterprise Ireland’s ‘Built To Innovate’ campaign, an initiative under the government’s Housing For All plan. 

He said:“This government is determined to make owning your own home a reality for the thousands of people across the country who wish to buy but are struggling to. Our Housing for All Plan is working but it will take a concerted effort, all across industry, local and national government to drive forward the increase in supply we have planned.

'Help reduce some of the cost of residential construction'

“This campaign is a small part of the solution. We are now making available grants and training programmes, which would usually only be for export-focused companies, to our domestic home-building sector. We hope this will help reduce some of the cost of residential construction and ensure that quality and sustainability are embedded in the design and construction processes of all new homes.”

The Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Darragh O’Brien, TD, said: “Reducing construction costs is critical to increasing supply. Recent analysis shows that the cost of materials is increasing and that there is continuing demand for construction skills.

"Productivity in construction needs to improve to address this imbalance and we need to look to innovation in areas such as modern methods of construction.

"I am very pleased to see Enterprise Ireland’s 'Built to Innovate' initiative being launched. As committed to in Housing for All, the government, through Enterprise Ireland, is working with industry to strengthen the residential construction supply chain. This will further help to reduce the cost of construction and increase the supply of much needed homes.”

Digital, innovation and lean

The supports being made available are in the areas of digital, innovation and lean and further detail is available here.

Ross O’Colmain, department manager, construction and housing, with Enterprise Ireland said: “The Enterprise Ireland supports targeting the homebuilding sector are designed to enhance the industry’s ability to produce residential units in an economically sustainable manner.

"From our extensive experience of working with manufacturing and services businesses we know that advancing digitalisation, lean and innovation initiatives can make businesses more competitive and flexible. We look forward to applying these supports to a new sector and believe that they can feed a greater adoption and usage of modern methods of construction.”

The ‘Built To Innovate’ campaign will run for six weeks from March 21 across print and digital channels, especially in the construction sector.