Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for raising this issue in the context of planning and its obvious relationship to housing. As the Deputy will know, 30,000 houses were completed last year, in 2022. That is a 45% increase on 2021. Our target for this year, the end of 2023, was 29,000. We hope to hit that, if not exceed it. In the year to April 2023 some 50,000 homes were purchased by households. Of those, 17,000 were purchased by first-time buyers. There is therefore a growing number of first-time buyers in a position to buy houses. A record 6,716 new homes were added to the national housing stock in the first quarter of this year. That is the highest recorded since the series began in quarter 1 of 2011. Mortgage drawdowns rose by 10%. The commencements are also, thankfully, on the increase: 28,000 homes were commenced in the year to May 2023, 13,000 from January to May of this year. That is the highest level of commencements for this period since records began in 2014. Planning permissions granted for new homes increased by 38% nationally in the year to quarter 1 of 2023. The temporary time-limited waiver in respect of development contributions to local authorities, as well as Uisce Éireann water and wastewater connection charges, will reduce costs by about €12,500 per home, on average.

On the planning side, I take the Deputy's point. At the moment I think the review of development plans across 31 counties is more or less complete. They make provision for about 48,000 housing units to be constructed annually on zoned lands. That shows there is a bit of headroom. I take the Deputy's point that some zoned lands may not be immediately available due to infrastructure issues or other issues with development. As he will know, we have other initiatives around residential zoned land tax to incentivise the activation of zoned and serviced land for housing to avoid it being hoarded. Also, the recent publication of maps shows that about 11,000 ha of zoned and serviced land is available for housing. I think that is about 48,000 units to be constructed annually in terms of the zoned land. We probably need to drill down more as to how much of that land is available, but there is no doubt but that there is a lot of serviced zoned land out there that could be developed and needs to be developed. That is a key focus of our policy.

On the urban regeneration and redevelopment fund, URDF, very substantial funding, about €2 billion, is being made available to enable local authorities and areas to get the infrastructure in place for substantial housing projects. However, a lot of that infrastructural work is taking time, with the various local authorities working in partnership with the private sector. That fund is key.

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