Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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81. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government the number of cost-rental homes delivered through the cost-rental equity loan in 2022; the number of cost-rental homes delivered by the Land Development Agency in 2022; and the number of affordable purchase homes delivered through the Affordable Housing Fund in 2022. [3842/23]

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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Is the Minister in a position to tell us the number of affordable homes delivered through the three principal public housing affordable schemes set up by his Department last year before the housing fund cost-rental equity loan and the Land Development Agency's Project Tosaigh?

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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As the Deputy will know, 2022 represented the commencement of a very ambitious programme of delivery of affordable homes under the provisions of the schemes which we introduced with the Affordable Housing Act 2021. This saw significant delivery of cost-rental homes by Approved Housing Bodies, AHBs, in particular through the cost-rental equity loan, the first cost-rental and affordable purchase homes also delivered through the Land Development Agency, LDA, and the first affordable homes for purchase made available via the first home scheme and, indeed, by our local authorities. This momentum will continue in 2023 with a pipeline of housing delivery in place and being developed by local authorities, by AHBs and by the LDA as well as homes being made available through the first home scheme. Local authorities have begun systematically collating information on delivery of affordable homes in their areas, including validated delivery from AHBs and the LDA, in the same manner as is currently done for social housing for submissions to my Department. We expect that in the coming weeks.

Separately, the first home scheme has confirmed it has issued more than 800 approvals to date on applications received from first-time buyers. Local authorities have been approved for affordable housing funding of more than €210 million for 42 projects across 15 local authorities which will assist in the delivery of more than 2,800 affordable homes for purchase or rent. The 2022 returns to which the Deputy refers are currently being prepared by the local authorities. Informed by returns of this data which is scheduled literally over the coming weeks, I expect that my Department will be in a position to report the confirmed 2022, not just affordable housing delivery, we will break it down by cost rental, affordable purchase and first home scheme, but also the delivery of 2022 social homes by the end of this quarter. I actually expect it by the end of February or early March.

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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The housing plan has an aggregate target for affordable homes for last year of 4,000 units, as the Minister knows. At no stage has the Minister provided Deputies with a breakdown of how many of those will be through affordable housing fund purchase, the cost-rental equity loan by AHBs, Project Tosaigh or, indeed, the very controversial shared equity loan.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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It is not controversial.

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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As the Minister knows, the shared equity loan homes are not affordable. They are giving people an additional layer of debt but I do not want to have that debate today. What I want to know is what was delivered with the funding provided by the Minister to local authorities and AHBs? We know from the LDA’s website that Project Tosaigh delivered only 48 cost-rental homes last year. As of October only 300 cost-rental homes had been delivered by AHBs but that included the 35 delivered the previous year. On the basis of information I have, I suspect that not a single affordable home to purchase through the affordable housing fund was actually completed or purchased last year. We know, for example, that the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform in the brief to Deputy Paschal Donohoe when he became Minister stated that there would be fewer than 1,000 delivered. Is that the kind of ballpark figure the Minister expects when he gets the final figures from officials in the coming weeks?

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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We will not have the debate on the first home shared equity scheme today but it is equity that purchasers get and it is an extremely popular scheme that is working. As I said, more than 800 approvals have been made already to real households for real homes. That is good. We will break down that data when it is finalised. We will break it down between cost rental, affordable purchase through local authorities and Land Development Agency delivery as well. We are validating that data. We do not have the returns from every local authority area. I have given the Deputy the broad picture. We have a very good pipeline. The targets are without question challenging. They were challenging in 2022. The important thing is that we have proved the concept of cost rental in particular. We have hundreds of tenants in place already. When we have the data returns back in and fully collated and validated, we will certainly be publishing them in the detail requested by Deputy Ó Broin. It is important people see that and see the progress that has been made and where we need to fill further gaps as well. That will include such initiatives as Project Tosaigh. As the Deputy may know, we are looking at Project Tosaigh II returns right now, to which we have a good response.

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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My concern is twofold. With respect to the affordable housing fund purchases, in my own constituency homes were effectively completed midway through the year but because of disputes over legal contracts, they have not yet been purchased. We expect them to be purchased by February. That means those homes were not ready for occupation. In the Minister’s constituency, he launched affordable purchase homes in December. However, as at the start of January, those homes were not actually complete. Fingal County Council confirmed to me that they were practically complete but that utilities had not yet been connected and that was in the process of being resolved this month. In fact, the contracts have yet to be signed and will not be completed and ready for people to move in until February.

Likewise, the Minister has not proved the concept of cost rental. The LDA homes that were advertised under Project Tosaigh are coming in at rent of about €1,500. There are still no cost-rental units in the urban core where we need them. I suspect even when we see them in the urban core of Dublin that we will be looking at rents of between €1,600 and €1,900. Cost rental has to be affordable and €1,500 for a two-bedroom or three-bedroom unit outside Delgany is not an affordable rent. Therefore, as the Minister knows from his engagement with the AHBs, that scheme is in a bit of a crisis. Until we really grasp the issue of affordable cost rental, that scheme is going to run into huge problems not just in terms of the delivery last year but in the update of delivery this year and the year after.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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The first cost-rental tenants are actually in place. I met many of those residents. They have long-term, secure tenures with below-market rent. The rent is calculated on the basis of covering the cost of the delivery and management of the development. We have set an income cap of €53,000 net for that scheme. I am looking at changes to the cost-rental scheme and we are working through that. Every single cost-rental development we have advertised has been oversubscribed by ten or 12 times.

It is a very popular form of tenure and it is working. We are not just talking about it and we actually have tenants in place in those areas.

In regard to affordable purchase, there were issues in regard to conveyancing and legal issues in particular with the first local authority affordable purchase homes being sold but they have all been rectified. That was something we discussed here before. On the specific scheme that the Deputy references in Fingal, my own area, there were some issues with utility connections through the ESB to be very frank. The developer, the local authority and the ESB worked very well to rectify those and residents were issued with an update on that two weeks ago. The homes are complete and the first residents are moving in.