Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Some 74 proposals were submitted under LIHAF 1 by 21 local authorities in October 2016, with 34 projects across 15 local authorities receiving preliminary approval in March 2017. To date, grant agreements on 30 of these projects have been signed between the Department and local authorities. The total cost of the projects is €195.71 million, of which €146.69 million will be funded by the Department, with local authorities funding €49.02 million. The potential yield from LIHAF 1 is approximately 20,000 homes. Not all applications were successful. They were scored according to various criteria.

The proposed cost of the Ardmore Road project in Mullingar is €3.3 million, of which €2.48 million would be funded by the Exchequer and the remaining €820,000 by the local authority. The associated housing delivery potential is up to 1,000 units by 2021. It is within the remit or mandate of the local authority to resubmit the application. If it wishes to resubmit exactly the same application, it may do so. However, I note that the Ardmore Road scheme was unsuccessful because it did not receive enough points in the scoring attributed to each of the projects It might be wise for the local authority to look at projects that were successful under LIHAF 1 to see how it might reconsider the Ardmore Road project to give it a better chance of success under LIHAF 2.

See this speech in context