John Paul Phelan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Ellis. I am not as familiar as he is with the land around Dunsink, but I know it slightly. The Government recognises the housing affordability pressures faced by many households, particularly in certain parts of the country. It is for this reason that the overarching objective of Rebuilding Ireland is to increase the supply of new homes to 25,000 per annum by 2020. In particular, the aim is to increase the supply of high quality social and affordable homes from State and privately held lands to buy or rent as quickly as possible in areas where demand is greatest.

Critically, €5.35 billion in Exchequer investment has been secured to deliver 47,000 social housing homes through build, refurbishment, acquisitions and leasing over the period to 2021. This level of national funding to implement Rebuilding Ireland's targets means that funding is available to all local authorities to advance their housing delivery. This year, 4,500 new social housing homes will be delivered through new builds, acquisitions and refurbishments, and a significant proportion of these will involve new construction. Taking the Fingal area alone, there are 912 new homes at various stages of the approval process.

With regard to active land management, the Department, working with local authorities and the Housing Agency, has collated details of local authority lands acquired for housing purposes. To this end, details of 1,700 ha of land in local authority and Housing Agency ownership were published in April on the Rebuilding Ireland housing land map, with the aggregate potential to deliver 42,500 homes nationally. All local authorities, including Fingal County Council, are preparing strategic development and management plans for their housing lands, with particular emphasis on prioritising those sites with the most potential to deliver housing at scale in the short to medium term.

I understand that the site in question at Dunsink Lane is not currently part of the housing land map as it includes the former landfill site, and as such was not acquired by the council for housing purposes. However, as part of the active land management process, local authorities have been asked to confirm that the data published on the housing land map is fully up to date, and to ensure that any additional sites suitable for housing are included. This should be an iterative and live process, and as other lands are identified and become available they should be added to the map.

In its county development plan 2017-2023, adopted in March 2017, Fingal County Council recognises the strategic location and development potential of the lands at Dunsink. However, it also notes significant road, wastewater and other infrastructural constraints that require further detailed investigation so as to inform any future decision to zone the overall Dunsink area for a mixed-use urban area. The council has committed to carrying out a feasibility study to identify the necessary physical infrastructure required to realise the full development potential of the wider Dunsink lands and the Department will, of course, be happy to engage with the council as it progresses this work.

Last week the Minister, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, announced a second round of the local infrastructure housing activation fund, introduced by the then Minister, Deputy Coveney, a number of years ago. Looking at this for the first time in the past day or so, I see the Dunsink area might be a suitable location for some of this infrastructural funding to be spent. I also note that Fingal County Council has not yet brought forward additional sites for development of social housing at scale. However, there is a site at Wellview in Mulhuddart, which is considered to be the most advanced site of scale in Fingal County Council's housing land portfolio as things stand. The council has flagged that Dunsink is an area of strategic importance for its new development plan, and it is drawing up the strategic plan I mentioned. The Department is engaging with it in this process. In fairness to the point made by the Deputy, it is just over four miles from the city centre. It sounds like an area very suitable for development, but there are a couple of hurdles that the local authority and the Department must overcome first before those decisions can be made.

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