Malcolm Noonan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

The recently published Housing for All strategy is the Government's plan to increase the supply of housing to an average of 33,000 units per year over the next decade, including an average of 10,000 social homes per annum from 2022 to 2030. Housing for All is supported by an investment package of over €4 billion per annum through an overall combination of €12 billion in direct Exchequer funding, €3.5 billion in funding through the Land Development Agency and €5 billion in funding through the Housing Finance Agency over a five-year period.

Increasing the overall supply of housing is at the centre of the Housing for All plan. This includes direct investment in social and affordable housing, reforms to ensure availability of land, measures to support the viability of development and ensuring sufficient investment and capacity to support housing construction. There has been extensive engagement between our Department and local authorities on the preparation of Housing for All and its implementation. The Minister held two summits with local authority chief executives in 2021 in addition to bilateral engagements with most local authorities. He will be holding another summit with local authority chief executives in February that will focus on the implementation of the Housing for All measures.

A key action under Housing for All required each local authority to prepare a housing delivery action plan that set out details of social and affordable housing delivery over the next five years. All local authorities submitted their plans to the Minister in December and our Department is engaging with local authorities on them, in particular their alignment with the targets and policy objectives set out in Housing for All. The plans will be published in quarter 2. There will be ongoing engagement with our Department to support their implementation.

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