Ms Caroline Timmons:

The Senator is right. Dublin City Council has proven to be complex in respect of the delivery of affordable housing, largely for the reasons the Senator set out. Over the past year, however, we have seen the development of a very good working relationship with DCC and the people delivering housing there. Additional resources are being provided, of course, into the housing department to work on that aspect and we are seeing a level of ambition coming forward from DCC to deliver affordable housing in the city. Its housing delivery action plan set out an ambition to deliver 2,000 units out to 2026. We are seeing mixed-tenure sites coming forward that will achieve this delivery for us, in addition to social housing delivery. We have the likes of O'Devaney Gardens, Emmet Road, Oscar Traynor Road, Cherry Orchard and Balbutcher Lane. Those projects are all coming forward, but it does take time. They are big, complex mixed-tenure sites, and this is exactly what we would like to see, but it does take much more time to do than bringing forward, for example, advanced purchase sites as we might be able to do elsewhere. Delivery by the Land Development Agency, LDA, in the case of the former St. Teresa's Gardens, for example, has worked well and a good relationship is developing between the DCC and the LDA. The project at Cromcastle is also being developed with the LDA.

We can, therefore, see sites being developed for affordable housing. We would like to accelerate this, so we are working with DCC in this regard to see if there is anything the Department or the Housing Agency can do. Obviously, if there are measures we can take to assist, then we will. At the moment, we are helping the council with its modelling and proceeding with any applications with all due haste. Over the longer term, then, we can certainly see the pipeline of housing developing in Dublin city. What is more difficult is for the AHBs to provide cost-rental housing in Dublin city. The overall cost of developing housing is problematic for them. Again, we are working on this through a review of the current cost rental equity loan, CREL, to see if we can tailor it a little better to give those organisations more space to provide these projects in Dublin city. We would like to see the AHBs doing a bit more in this area. We are keen to see if we can get something coming through in this regard in the next year. DCC has the Hole in the Wall Road site in Clongriffin and this is coming through as an AHB cost-rental development funded by a CREL loan. We are delighted to see those units coming through. That will happen in 2024 and it will probably be our first cost-rental development in Dublin city undertaken with the AHBs. We will keep this momentum going and keep working with those organisations in this regard.