Mr. Bob Jordan:

We are pleased to assist the committee in its discussion on the financing and funding of social and affordable housing. I am accompanied by my colleagues, Mr. Jim Baneham, director of delivery, and Ms Claire Feeney, head of local authority services.

The Housing Agency is a State agency with a vision of achieving an integrated housing system, meeting the nation's housing needs and promoting sustainable communities. We support the delivery of social and affordable homes by working in close collaboration with our main stakeholders, which are the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, local authorities and approved housing bodies. We do this in three main ways. First, we co-ordinate the implementation of Government housing programmes. Second, we build capacity in the housing sector through education and information provision. Last, we provide high-quality research and data. The Housing Agency is a resource to the overall housing system, and we have a team of experienced and knowledgeable housing professionals. In addition to supporting social and affordable housing delivery, which we will discuss here today, we also play a key role in social inclusion, including homelessness and disability. At the beginning of this month we opened the Housing First national office within the agency. We also drafted the recently published national housing strategy for disabled people on behalf of the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage.

This afternoon I intend to focus on the areas where the Housing Agency is involved in the financing and funding of social and affordable housing. The agency has different levels of involvement that range between directly providing funding to providing centralised supports for national funding programmes to giving advice and technical support.

The agency currently has two direct roles in terms of financing and funding. First, we provide cost rental equity loans to approved housing bodies to provide cost rental housing. Second, we manage the Housing Agency's acquisition fund of €70 million to acquire vacant housing stock for social housing use. Long-term low cost financing is key to delivering cost rental homes with rents of at least 25% below open market rents. The cost rental equity loans, CREL, is long-term loan funding that is available to approved housing bodies. This loan funds up to 30% of the cost of delivering new cost rental homes. The Housing Agency has the role of managing and administering this loan on behalf of the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage. I wish to note that for the first time, the Housing Agency is a lender.

Bringing vacant properties back into use for social housing purposes is a key Government objective. The €70 million Housing Agency acquisitions fund was established at the beginning of 2017 to buy existing vacant properties from banks and other financial institutions to provide social housing. By the end of February 2022, a total of 927 properties had been acquired under the fund. Housing for All, which is the Government's housing strategy, committed to review the role of the Housing Agency's acquisitions fund and this review is currently under way.

I will now discuss the Housing Agency's less direct involvement in funding programmes. The Housing Agency provides centralised supports for the consistent and efficient delivery of funding programmes.

We carry out the technical assessment of payment and availability, P&A, payments and capital advance leasing facility, CALF, funding applications from approved housing bodies, AHBs, on behalf of the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage. As the committee is aware, P&A and CALF funding is the main funding source for AHB housing delivery. To the end of 2021, just over 11,000 homes have been delivered using this funding mechanism.

A new role for the agency is to provide technical assessment of local authority applications for the affordable housing fund, AHF. This fund provides local authorities with a subsidy of up to €100,000 towards the cost of a home and is aimed at delivering thousands of homes for affordable purchase and cost rental. To date, the Housing Agency has completed assessments on eight AHF submissions, totalling approximately 500 homes.

We are responsible for the programme management of the national mortgage-to-rent scheme, MTR, which is designed to help homeowners at risk of losing their homes due to mortgage arrears to remain living in their homes as social housing tenants. By the end of February 2022, some 1,727 households had been supported to remain in their homes.

We also provide local authorities with a national shared service for the underwriting of local authority home loan applications. This type of loan enables first-time buyers and fresh starters on low to moderate incomes to access sustainable, competitive mortgages to buy new or second-hand homes or self-builds. We have underwritten 179 local authority home loans to the end of February 2022. Under the previous Rebuilding Ireland home loan scheme, 11,259 loans were underwritten.

We also provide advice and technical support in respect of funding schemes. We are advising the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage on the design and operation of the first home affordable purchase shared equity scheme. We also play a role in long-term social housing leasing. We oversee the template leases, including the repair and leasing scheme. Additionally, we support the capital assistance scheme, CAS, and local authority direct-build capital projects. The agency has a hands-on technical team, called the projects and procurement team, that provides technical support to local authorities and AHBs in the procurement, design and delivery of social housing projects. We also provide guidance and assistance, including template documentation, to support local authorities with compulsory purchase orders, CPOs. The Housing Agency has established a team to assist local authorities with information gathering, title searches and investigating third-party charges that arise with CPOs.

The members of the committee will see that the Housing Agency has a wide role in supporting the financing and funding of housing programmes. We recently published our three-year statement of strategy and a key priority is continuing to work with our stakeholders to deliver more affordable and social housing in the years to come. We are happy to answer any questions members may have or to provide further details as required.