Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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34. To ask the Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government if he will provide an update on the Government's housing strategy; and if he will provide an indication when councils will receive notification on how to spend property tax ring-fenced for housing; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [3629/15]

Alan Kelly (Tipperary North, Labour)
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I refer to the reply to Question No. 8 on today’s Order Paper.

My Department has advised local authorities of their provisional Local Property Tax allocations from the Local Government Fund for 2015. For certain local authorities, with stronger property bases, the amount of Local Property Tax receipts to be retained locally (80%) in 2015 will be greater than the level of funding those individual local authorities received from General Purpose Grants in 2014.  Ten of these local authorities will use a portion of this surplus funding for their own discretionary purposes, with the remainder used to fund vital services in the Housing and Roads areas, to free up Central Government funding for other purposes.

The total Housing provision for 2015 will result in an investment of almost €800 million across a range of housing programmes, of which €119.36 million will be self-funded by the relevant authorities. Further details in relation to the specific obligations to be met from these self-funding levels will be provided as part of the overall Housing grant allocations process for 2015.