Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for his question and his support of Government in its rolling out of these measures. As he knows, cost rental did not exist 18 months ago. We have rolled it out and well over 1,000 tenancies have been approved. The Deputy referenced Shanganagh Castle, which is a very important and significant site, where ground has been broken. It is the largest social and affordable housing site in the country.

Rents for cost rental are a direct function of the costs of constructing, financing, managing and maintaining the development. Exchequer funding is being used to assist in reducing the cost of construction of cost-rental apartments making the rents ultimately more affordable. Support is provided to approved housing bodies, AHBs, through the cost rental equity loan, CREL, and local authorities through the affordable housing fund. The CREL scheme provides AHBs with loans of up to 45% of the cost of a development or acquisition. Local authorities are now able to avail of capital grants of up to €150,000 per unit for cost-rental delivery under the affordable housing fund. We increased that from €100,000 to €150,000. The remaining capital costs are financed through long-term borrowing and preferential rates to local authorities by AHBs from the Housing Finance Agency.

Cost-rental apartments are also delivered by the Land Development Agency, LDA, through Project Tosaigh, which is designed to unlock planning permissions that are not yet developed in the private sector.

I expect to make significant announcements in the coming weeks in that space which will be pertinent to the Deputy's own area and to the cities. Funding to acquire these homes is sourced through access to €1.25 billion of capital funding from the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund, ISIF, and commercial borrowing.

Following the recent Government decision, I will also bring forward a cost-rental viability measure that will apply across the board where schemes are designated cost rental. We basically said that would also be a subvention or equity of up to €150,000. We have high financing costs and we want to reduce that to keep the rents low. This has been successful so far but I will bring forward further change and I expect that to be in place from the start of July.

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