Mr. Anthony Flynn:

I am executive manager with responsibility for housing and community services, including the housing programme. I will give an update on Dublin City Council's social housing action plan in the context of the Rebuilding Ireland action plan.

Regarding pillar 1, as the committee will be aware, the Government's initiative for rapid-build housing is for the early delivery of housing across the four local authorities. In Dublin city we have delivered 22 units, and 131 will be made available starting in the next ten days. Allocations have been made and we are in the process of awarding the tender for the next 70 units, which we anticipate will be on site in the month of August, with a view to having two schemes completed by the end of this year and one scheme early next year. We are also bringing a proposal to the city council with a view to commencing a volumetric - that is, multi-storey - rapid-build housing programme. Basically, they are apartments. We anticipate we will get a yield of approximately 500 units from that programme.

Our targets that were set in the 2020 programme are set out in the table in the report. We were asked to deliver 3,347 social housing units. We anticipate we will deliver 6,480 units and have already delivered 5,147 units, as broken down in the table on page 8 of the report. Our allocation was €292 million; to date, we have spent €420 million. There is also provision for the completion of 453 social housing units in the remainder of 2017 and these are listed in the report. We have also received confirmation that there will be funding for a number of schemes, which are again outlined in the report.

Regeneration works are ongoing for the refurbishment of 143 homes in Dolphin Park and Dolphin House and we will issue tenders for regeneration projects in St. Teresa's Gardens, Ballybough Road and Croke Villas this year. We have spent €24 million on returning void properties to use, and 2,316 have been returned to stock, with a current vacancy rate of 1.56%. I have provided on pages 9 to 13, inclusive, an outline of the progress of our schemes in the context of the four-stage capital works management framework process.

Regarding pillar 3, concerning the building of more homes, the council has developed a housing land initiative scheme for its lands on Oscar Traynor Road, O'Devaney Gardens and St. Michael's Estate, Emmet Road, which will yield 1,646 homes, of which 385 will be social housing. The prior information notice is out for those three schemes and a pre-qualification questionnaire notice will be on eTenders in the next two weeks. The social housing public private partnership pilot scheme is also ongoing in the city and will yield 220 units in two schemes, both of which are at Part 8 stage.

The multi-unit housing developments sites, which are large public and private landbanks in the city, are identified in the table provided in the documentation and we have successfully received funding from the local infrastructural housing activation fund to facilitate works at Belmayne and the Poolbeg strategic development zone, SDZ.

A number of important changes were made to Dublin city's development plan from 2016 to 2022. This was primarily to assist the development of residential lands within the city. In that context, the amount of zoned land in the city has increased by 47 ha and there is provision at this point for in excess of 52,000 homes to be built in the lifetime of the development plan. There are approximately 12 elements to this as outlined in the report.

New initiatives that we have implemented in the city include the buy and renew scheme and the repair and leasing scheme. The buy and renew scheme seems to be more appropriate to an urban environment, particularly Dublin city. We are looking derelict sites and properties etc. and we have identified 144 of them. We are using our powers with the compulsory purchase order process to bring some of those back into stock.

To conclude, real progress is being made to provide accommodation, both new and refurbished, in properties in the city. However, there are real challenges to overcome to provide the number of homes needed. Dublin City Council and the Dublin Region Homeless Executive will continue to provide short-term emergency housing requirements. However, we will phase out the need for this temporary accommodation and replace it with permanent housing solutions over the term of the Rebuilding Ireland plan. We thank members for inviting delegates from Dublin City Council and the Dublin Region Homeless Executive to present a report at today's sitting of the committee.