Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour)
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235. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government the amount of land which is owned by the county and city councils in Cork; the amount of land in acres owned by the Cork local authorities in each municipal district in the county and city; the amount of land owned by the Cork local authorities in the county and city that is zoned for industrial and residential use; and the amount required to bring specific land banks up to usable standards and land banks in particular according to each municipal district, in tabular form. [29767/16]

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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The information requested by the Deputy regarding lands owned by the Cork local authorities is not available to my Department and is a matter for the local authorities themselves.

Notwithstanding the above, the active pursuit of progressing housing developments on State lands, including local authority lands in Cork, is a major part of the new approach to housing provision under the Rebuilding Ireland Action Plan for Housing and Homelessness. The Action Plan contains a number of integrated actions to underpin land supply management, including the development of a national Land Supply Management Strategy, within the context of the new National Planning Framework, which is due for publication in the first half of 2017. This will involve identifying and mapping sites in local authority and public ownership with appropriate lands to be master-planned to deliver increased mixed-tenure housing, including social and more affordable housing. In addition, it is envisaged that local authorities will be supported in acquiring housing lands in key developable areas, and strategic opportunities for urban renewal and regeneration will be identified for co-ordinated action across relevant public sector bodies.

Furthermore, the Housing Agency, in consultation with my Department and local authorities, has already commenced the mapping of some 700 sites in local authority ownership and those held by the Agency under the Land Aggregation Scheme, showing their location, size, boundaries and other information. Once collated, this map will be made available in due course and will be updated to record the development and use of these lands.

The Action Plan also proposes the development of new approaches to local authority housing strategies, as part of their statutory development plans, with a particular focus on the selection of privately owned sites for delivery of starter homes at affordable prices to meet housing needs across their area, across tenures and types as well as meeting the social housing requirement.

My Department, in conjunction with local authority planning departments, carried out a national survey of all lands zoned for residential development in statutory local authority development plans and local area plans across Ireland. The results of this 2014 survey indicated that there were 17,434 hectares of residential zoned lands nationally, which could support the construction of over 414,000 dwellings. A summary report of this exercise, the Residential Land Availability Survey 2014, and the mapped results of the survey, are available on my Department’s website at the following link: .

A further Residential Land Availability Survey is planned to be undertaken in 2017.