Barry Cowen (Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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781. To ask the Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government the number of capital-funded social housing units and new builds that have been commenced since January 2015 by local authority area. [6838/16]

Alan Kelly (Tipperary, Labour)
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Following from the substantial announcements of new social housing projects that I made in May 2015, in July 2015 and in January 2016, we now have a strong pipeline of new social housing construction, acquisition and turnkey approvals in place. Between these three announcements, almost €680 million has been allocated for over 3,900 social housing new builds, turnkey developments and acquisitions. Details of these approvals are available on my Department’s website at the following links:

A breakdown of the number of social housing units covered in those newly announced construction projects across all local authorities is in the following table. It is these projects that will form the majority of the social housing units to be constructed between now and 2018; I am keen that local authorities advance these as soon as possible but recognise that all projects must proceed through the planning process and this and other factors can have a direct impact on the timing for their advancement.

Construction Approvals since Social Housing Strategy

While construction activity is ramping up, local authorities are using other approaches to deliver new social housing units in the more immediate term, including acquiring properties, with over 1,000 new social housing units secured through that approach in 2015 alone, and working with developers to build and acquire new Turnkey developments.