Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Senator for his questions. To respond to the last question he asked, I did not see the report, I am afraid, because we were in committee first thing this morning. The plan is, as we finish our voids programme, which is coming to its conclusion, to move that money and activity into maintenance. Maintenance of the social housing stock across the country fell through the crisis years in a big way as resources for local authorities were reduced. We are now increasing resources and funding for local authorities. As we come through the voids programme, we will be able to move that money and activity into a maintenance programme, which is very important because of the increase in the number of social housing homes that we must maintain. Of course we do so. These are people's homes, so State management in this regard is very important. We have hardwired this into all the regeneration programmes we have coming out.

Some €310 million was made available for the serviced sites fund in budget 2019, comprising €275 million from the Exchequer and €35 million from local authorities. The breakdown on this in spending, as allocated, is €100 million in 2019, €142 million in 2020 and €68 million in 2021. This funding will not all be spent in each of the years, but I have authority within my budget to carry forward money for the serviced sites fund into subsequent years as I need to do so. That funding is there to deliver at least 6,200 homes as part of that affordability pipeline, but it is not the only affordability pipeline we have. Last year we commenced the relevant section of Part 5 of the 2009 Act relating to the serviced sites fund. We introduced the regulations for the scheme of priority in March of this year. As I said earlier, 26 of the 31 local authorities have submitted their schemes to me, and ten have been approved by local authorities. I made the first call for sites from local authorities in June of last year. We finalised ten projects for 1,400 homes in December of last year worth €43 million.

We have received from 20 local authorities the economic assessments they did towards the end of last year. We issued a second in call in April and we have received 29 submissions from 15 local authorities so far. These are worth about €90 million and will help support almost 2,000 new homes. We will give sanction on those that have been successful very shortly. That is the current position with the serviced sites fund.

Work on action 3.19 of the Rebuilding Ireland plan is ongoing. In some areas, as we solve particular land issues, we are then able to update the live map we have in Rebuilding Ireland regarding what is happening with land use. In other areas, we have made greater progress in getting a proper picture of the land need. The Galway task force will do an important piece of work on that. Some land belonging to local authorities is indebted. We are also considering private land for potential turnkey solutions as these may be a cheaper and quicker way of getting social housing delivered. There are several layers to this and the process is ongoing, which is the reason it is coloured orange on the map. We are constantly publishing and updating the website map. Certain areas have a very detailed plan already in place. The Housing Agency has done its land aggregation scheme work within the timeframe. With regard to the publication of individual plans, I will check the position with the relevant section. As the Senator is aware, the housing delivery office in the Department checks weekly with the local authorities what is being delivered and where the land is coming from and does future needs assessments for land for local authorities and housing bodies. The purpose of the regional workshops is to identify the land needs of housing bodies that local authorities might be able to meet or State land on which housing could be delivered by the Land Development Agency.