Mr. Robert Nicholson:

As the members will know, the local infrastructure housing activation fund, LIHAF, was a scheme introduced in 2017 with €200 million to fund 20 large infrastructure programmes around the country. Those programmes intended to deliver approximately 20,000 social, more affordable and private homes. To the end of 2020, based on incomplete data - we are still looking for figures - approximately 2,703 were homes delivered. Of those, 1,129 had some form of cost reduction and 251 were social. The rest were private. Everyone accepts that the local infrastructure housing activation Fund, LIHAF, delivered more slowly than anticipated originally. That is largely because they are very complex infrastructure programmes and take quite a deal of time. Delivery is beginning to significantly ramp up. We saw an announcement by Cork City Council yesterday that it was going to tender for 600 homes in Old Whitechurch Road.

What we are seeing around the country in respect of the local infrastructure housing activation fund, LIHAF, programme, where the infrastructure comes first and the housing comes thereafter, local authorities tendering for the delivery of housing. We expect a significant delivery of those in the next two to three years across all of those programmes. It has been confirmed that two of the 30 will not progress based on local authority decisions.