DUBLIN, April 11 (Xinhua) -- The residential property prices in the Irish capital Dublin have risen 92.8 percent after it hit a record low in February 2012 following the financial crisis, said the country's national statistics bureau CSO on Thursday.
Nevertheless, the city's residential property prices are still 22.1 percent lower than their February 2007 peak, said the CSO.
Over the last seven years or so, the annual growth rate of the residential property prices in Dublin averaged over 13 percent, nearly two percentage points higher than the national average, showed the CSO figures.
The soaring residential property prices in the country, particularly in Dublin, which accommodates nearly 30 percent of the country's population standing at an estimated 4.86 million in 2018, have drawn wide criticisms of the government's housing policy.
Facing the mounting public pressure, the Irish government announced last year a 2.3-billion-euro (2.6 billion U.S. dollars) allocation for housing programmes in its 2019 budget, a 26 percent increase over the previous fiscal year.
Of the total funds for the housing programmes, 1.25 billion euros will be earmarked for the supply of 10,000 new social housing units.
Partially thanks to the efforts made by the government to ease the supply shortages on the local property market, the growth rates of the residential property prices in Ireland, especially in Dublin, have obviously slowed down in recent months.
The CSO statistics showed that in the year to February the national residential property prices in the country went up by only 4.3 percent compared to a 5.2-percent increase in the year to January and a 12.5-percent increase in the same period last year.
In Dublin, the residential property prices only posted a 1.4-percent increase in the year to February, said the CSO.(1 euro=1.126 U.S. dollars)
