Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

We will be inviting applications for the serviced site fund shortly. Under that fund, €310 million has been set aside over the next three years to service sites. Applications originally opened in June 2018 when we had €100 million set aside. The funding was increased in budget 2019. We will be opening the scheme again in the next few weeks but I do not have an exact date at the moment. Local authorities will be invited to make applications for funding for various sites, including the ones we referred to in Cork. I expect that the site in Kinsale will be on the application from Cork County Council. We have engaged with local authority officials on this. We had a workshop in November with the local authorities which was attended by Mr. Maurice Manning and his team and they engaged fully with us. I was in Cork recently with Senator Lombard to open a housing project and had further discussions with Mr. Manning about opportunities to provide more affordable housing. He is very much on the ball.

In terms of how the process will work, local authorities will apply to the fund which will help to service the land that they own. The regulations for the scheme will be announced in the next couple of weeks by the Minister. These regulations will clarify who qualifies for the scheme. It is expected that those who would qualify for the Rebuilding Ireland home loan, that is, those with a joint income of around €75,000, or a single income of €50,000 will qualify for affordable housing. Each local authority will decide itself on the priority and allocation process in terms of who qualifies for any houses built. The allocation systems will be designed locally.

This is a good scheme and we hope it will deliver between 6,000 and 7,000 houses over the next few years. We will have an opportunity to deliver a lot more into the future too.