Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

This will involve three main strands. First, more than €1.5 billion will be directly invested by the Exchequer by 2017. Second, public private partnerships will be used to invest €300 million in social housing units by 2017. Third, an off-balance sheet financial vehicle will provide at least €400 million from 2015 onwards to approved housing bodies.

Turning specifically to next year, I am allocating more than €800 million for the housing programme in 2015. More than €450 million of this will be for capital investment. This is the first major investment in housing by a Government since 2009. Further measures will be taken in 2016 and 2017, when allocations of €500 million and €600 million, respectively, will be made for social housing capital. This capital investment will deliver an additional 2,500 housing units in 2015 and more than 6,700 housing units by 2017.

As well as increasing direct Exchequer investment, we also need to explore off-balance sheet approaches to delivering on this urgent social need.

The first approach is to develop public private partnerships. These are not the land swap deals between local authorities and developers which so obviously failed in the last regime. We are going to adopt the successful model that we have developed over recent years, which has delivered 23 schools at a time of limited resources. The firm objective of this measure is to deliver a further 1,500 housing units by 2017.

The second non-Exchequer approach is to set up an off-balance-sheet financial vehicle to channel investment funds to the voluntary housing sector. This will operate on an independent commercial basis to provide financing to approved housing bodies. The financial investment vehicle would be open both to private investors and bodies such as the European Investment Bank. We have already had discussions with them. It is the intention of the Government that €400 million of public investment will be available, including from the proceeds of the sale of the Bord Gáis Energy business.

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