IRELAND’S CONSTRUCTION SECTOR was not in good health before the Middle East escalation; in fact, it is in measurably worse health now.

The question is not whether the current geopolitical shock will affect Irish housing delivery and infrastructure timelines; it already has. The question is whether anyone in a position to act is willing to say so plainly.

The numbers were moving in the wrong direction before the Strait of Hormuz closure disrupted commercial shipping in late February. The CSO’s wholesale price index showed construction materials and wages rising 2.3 per cent year-on-year in January 2026. Concrete blocks and bricks were up 8 per cent.

Chemicals and petrochemicals, the feedstock for insulation, membranes, PVC, and adhesives, were up 21 per cent. The ESRI raised its inflation forecast for 2026 to 3.2 per cent, the highest since the energy crisis of 2022–23, and warned explicitly that conflict-driven construction inflation “could hamper the building of new homes.”

None of this was a surprise to anyone working in the sector. It was, however, apparently a surprise to the policy conversation, which continues to discuss housing targets and infrastructure ambitions as though the cost environment were a background condition rather than the central constraint.

We need to understand that there is a structural feature of construction costs that policymakers consistently fail to internalise. That is, these costs go up easily but always resist coming back down.

After 2008, when house prices collapsed by half, construction........

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