Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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3. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government to comment on the ongoing delay in his Department's approvals for social and affordable housing projects funded via SHIP, CAS, CALF, CREL and AHF; to confirm the total number of projects submitted to his Department under each funding stream since September 2024 to date in 2025; the number that have been approved, and the local authority, or approved housing bodies, involved formally notified of that approval during the same time period. [13256/25]

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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A significant number of social and affordable housing applications were delayed in the Minister's Department at the latter end of last year, pending approval. We do not have the final figure but it could be anywhere in the region of 5,000 units. At Cabinet, the Minister got approval to progress 3,000 of those. However, my understanding is that the vast majority of those have yet to be formally approved with the relevant local authorities and approved housing bodies. Will the Minister confirm the status of the approvals for those 3,000 units, in particular the communication with the local authorities and approved housing bodies? Will he tell us the total number of homes that were delayed pending approval last year and how many are still awaiting approval?

James Browne (Wexford, Fianna Fail)
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The Government is fully committed to working with all stakeholders to deliver social, affordable and cost rental homes at scale, with a record level of investment being provided for the delivery of housing in 2025 - capital funding of €6.5 billion supplemented by current funding of €1.65 billion. The number of new-build social homes in the pipeline for delivery in the three-year period 2025 to 2027 is circa 36,000 homes, the highest ever for a three-year period. The strongest national delivery of social housing since 1975 was recorded in 2022 with 10,254 social homes delivered. This was exceeded in 2023 with 11,938 homes.

Affordability and the chance to own a home is at the heart of the Government’s housing policy. As detailed under Housing for All, the Government plans to deliver 54,000 affordable homes by 2030, with 36,000 affordable purchase and 18,000 cost rental homes. A comprehensive implementation strategy is in place to support the various affordable housing schemes now being delivered by a range of delivery partners.

Since September 2024, my Department has approved 273 social and affordable housing projects and continues to approve projects. As with all Exchequer-funded projects, my Department, as approving authority, assesses each project application for suitability, value for money and compliance with the various requirements of the applicable funding scheme. There will always be projects on hand with my Department which are either under assessment or the subject of further engagement with local authorities or approved housing bodies. This is perfectly normal in the context of the circa 2,500 social and affordable housing projects which have been or are being handled by my Department currently and are scheduled for delivery in the period 2025 to 2027.

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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The Minister's predecessor had a terrible habit of refusing to answer very reasonable questions from the Opposition during Priority Questions. I had hoped that the Minister would not repeat that pattern. Unfortunately, he has done so just now. He has failed to address the question. There was not a perfectly normal situation at the end of last year. We know that because the local authorities, approved housing bodies and building contractors and developers have told us that. There was a huge delay in anything up to 5,000 units of social affordable housing. That was caused in part by a significant overspend in the Department because there were challenges around the operation of the cost rental equity loan as well as the social housing investment fund.

The Minister sought and secured approval for 3,000 social and affordable homes at Cabinet. Of those, how many notifications have been passed on to local authorities and approved housing bodies so that they can get working on them? Of the remainder, how many are still awaiting approval? These are reasonable questions. I got a poor reply from the Minister to a parliamentary question over a week ago when he refused to provide me with the information. We should not have these kinds of rows, so please will the Minister address the question I have asked?

James Browne (Wexford, Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Deputy for his question. We received an additional €450 million a couple of weeks ago to release up to 3,000 new properties to be delivered. We are working our way through those approvals as quickly as possible. As the Deputy will know, they need to be assessed before final approval. The majority of those have now been done. It is something that is in flux at any moment in time, but I expect the last of those to be approved in the next couple of weeks in terms of funding.

Regarding other applications on hand, we have an open call, applications come in and we process them. However, the fact that an application comes in does not mean it is necessarily going to be funded.

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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The additional €450 million of capital approved by Cabinet still means the total capital expenditure for social and affordable homes this year is less than the total outturn last year. It is an improved situation but it is not a better situation. To be clear, is the Minister telling me that a majority of those 3,000 units have completed all of the processes with the Department and the relevant local authorities and approved housing bodies have been notified? Is he also saying that all of those 3,000 units will have the formal notification to the local authorities and approved housing bodies within a couple of weeks, as he said?

I appreciate the Minister is new in the Department and getting his head around this. At the end of last year, there was an exceptional situation. It was the first time that had happened in my time tracking social and affordable housing delivery. It has caused huge difficulties, including potential damage to relationships between approved housing bodies and building contractors. It has caused enormous frustration in local authorities. There is a real fear it will impact on output, maybe not this year, but in terms of Government targets for social and affordable housing next year and the year after. Will the Minister provide absolute clarity that all of the delivery agencies, local authorities and approved housing bodies will be fully notified of those 3,000 approvals within a matter of weeks?

James Browne (Wexford, Fianna Fail)
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I understand the frustration among local authorities and approved housing bodies but there was a general election, which caused a certain delay in projects. Those projects are being worked through now as quickly as possible, though. A final check always has to be done on every project before its approval is notified to the local authority. I cannot guarantee that every single house will be approved within that, if an issue arises on the final check.

What I see is that, subject to everything being in accordance with the requirements through those checks, any of them that are still outstanding would be approved in the coming weeks.