Results 4,981-5,000 of 15,555 for speaker:Eoghan Murphy

Other Questions: Local Infrastructure Housing Activation Fund (20 Jun 2018)

Eoghan Murphy: I thank the Deputy for the follow-up questions. LIHAF 1 is about using State money to unlock larger areas of land and housing potential than would have been available had we directly built the houses ourselves. Approximately €200 million will deliver in the region of 20,000 homes. Not every scheme that applied to the fund was successful. There were three successful schemes under...

Other Questions: Local Infrastructure Housing Activation Fund (20 Jun 2018)

Eoghan Murphy: I will respond briefly to Deputy Ó Broin. I do not agree that the sites would have proceeded had we not put in place LIHAF 1 funding. The State is getting the money back for the investment made. The State is getting far more back in terms of unlocking these sites for housing than it might have gotten had it directly invested the money. If the current inflation trend for house price...

Other Questions: Housing Assistance Payment Administration (20 Jun 2018)

Eoghan Murphy: I thank the Deputy for his question. He touched on a couple of issues and I will try to get to each of them briefly. He is absolutely right to focus on people who are sleeping on the street, on trying to get them into emergency accommodation and then onto a sustainable pathway. We now have the policies in place to do so. Since last year we have seen a dramatic reduction in the level of...

Other Questions: Election Management System (20 Jun 2018)

Eoghan Murphy: Who would be No. 2?

Other Questions: Housing Assistance Payment Administration (20 Jun 2018)

Eoghan Murphy: I thank the Deputy for the question. In January last, I provided each local authority with the capacity and resources to establish a dedicated housing assistance payment, HAP, place finder service. Among the services and support the place finder service can offer is the capacity to pay deposits and advance rental payments to landlords on behalf of households in emergency homeless...

Other Questions: Housing Assistance Payment Administration (20 Jun 2018)

Eoghan Murphy: I thank the Deputy for his questions. I do not doubt he has done much work in this area and I am well aware he has engaged with my officials for a number of weeks on a couple of cases. The place finder service was only rolled out beyond Dublin and Cork at the beginning of the year. Of the 20 local authorities which requested a place finder service, 17 now have a service in place. The...

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Housing Policy (20 Jun 2018)

Eoghan Murphy: There is much interest in the St. Michael’s site because it provides opportunities to deliver cost rental, affordable homes close to the city centre, close to key infrastructure, such as transport, and close to where people will want to live and work. It can do that in a way where people who are not able to qualify for social housing, but also cannot get access to the private rental...

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Housing Policy (20 Jun 2018)

Eoghan Murphy: Every time we talk about fixing our broken housing sector, we talk about doing it in a way that does not make the mistakes of the past. That is why we always talk about a mixture of tenure on any site. It is the right way to go to have social and affordable homes and private homes on the same site. We know on the St. Michael's site that we can accommodate all three with a much greater...

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Social and Affordable Housing Provision (20 Jun 2018)

Eoghan Murphy: Developing the State landbank for housing is a key priority. Importantly, we have large sites in Dublin, Cork and other key urban areas where housing and homelessness pressures are greatest. We now have a good picture of all local authority residential lands and authorities have well-developed plans for many of their sites. This is backed by €6 billion in Exchequer funding, and...

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Social and Affordable Housing Provision (20 Jun 2018)

Eoghan Murphy: I thank the Deputy for the question. If there was a difficulty in the response Deputy Boyd Barrett heard, that was because of a difficulty in the question. It flies in the face of reality. This crisis is 15 years in the making. This Government has put together a €6 billion war chest to fix our housing sector under Rebuilding Ireland and to fix it in a way so that we do not make the...

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Social and Affordable Housing Provision (20 Jun 2018)

Eoghan Murphy: This is not a question of money or resources. They are in place. There is a €6 billion ring-fenced fund over the life of the Rebuilding Ireland programme. When I needed an additional €100 million last year, I was able to secure it and that went into homes and emergency accommodation. Last year, when I also went looking for €500 million for Rebuilding Ireland, I was...

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Housing Policy (20 Jun 2018)

Eoghan Murphy: The housing land initiative, HLI, includes the regeneration of a number of significant development sites on lands in the ownership of Dublin City Council, including St. Michael's Estate site in Inchicore. Feasibility studies on the sites, which were presented to and passed by the elected members of Dublin City Council on 9 January 2017, included the council’s agreed optimum mix of 30%...

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Social and Affordable Housing (20 Jun 2018)

Eoghan Murphy: We are asking local authorities, apart from the ten areas in which we know there is a difficulty, to prove the case for having an affordability scheme. Each local authority will have to do this under the scheme. I think I have answered all of the Deputy's questions.

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Social and Affordable Housing Funding (20 Jun 2018)

Eoghan Murphy: The Government's Rebuilding Ireland: Action Plan for Housing and Homelessness emphasises the need to look at new ways of funding social housing delivery, in particular, the need to provide structural, funding and policy supports to increase delivery of social housing by approved housing bodies. Against that background, credit union representative bodies put forward proposals for how credit...

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Social and Affordable Housing Funding (20 Jun 2018)

Eoghan Murphy: It is very important as we resolve the housing crisis that we look to new finance vehicles. The Deputy is absolutely correct to emphasise the role the credit union sector can play. There are also a number of funds we are looking to get involved in the provision of social and affordable housing. We can leverage these streams of funding to make sure we put secure housing in place and at less...

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Social and Affordable Housing Funding (20 Jun 2018)

Eoghan Murphy: We have to remember that it is a decision for the approved housing bodies to make with the credit union sector. We cannot force them into making it.

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Social and Affordable Housing Funding (20 Jun 2018)

Eoghan Murphy: Phase 3 is about the technical work required to put together a special purpose vehicle. It is not simple to put a special purpose vehicle together. There are a number of technical requirements. It has been indicated to me that further clarification will come from the approved housing bodies to my Department on how exactly they can do it. We have to bear in mind the separate work happening...

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Social and Affordable Housing (20 Jun 2018)

Eoghan Murphy: I thank the Deputy for his question. It is important to note that the problems we are facing in the housing sector were 15 years in the making and they cannot be fixed in two years. However, we are seeing some interesting developments in the housing market. For example, house prices were still falling in 2012 and while they are dramatically increasing again, they are still 21% below the...

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Social and Affordable Housing (20 Jun 2018)

Eoghan Murphy: This is about building Ó Cualann-type housing at scale. To do this, I have increased the amount of money available from €25 million to €75 million, plus €25 million from the local authorities. Some of this money will be drawn down this year to meet the cost of site preparation works. I hope to see some affordable purchase homes accessed this year but we will...

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Social and Affordable Housing (20 Jun 2018)

Eoghan Murphy: This crisis is not eight years in the making. House prices were still falling in 2012. The affordability scheme was stood down because there was no affordability issue in the country at that time. We exited the bailout in 2014. In 2016, the Fine Gael-Labour Party Government put in place Rebuilding Ireland, a dedicated Ministry and, for the first time, ring-fenced funding to restore the...