Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)
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120. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government the level of funding that will be provided to Cavan County Council for all housing projects in 2017; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [36773/16]

Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)
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121. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government the level of funding that will be provided to Monaghan County Council for all housing projects in 2017; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [36774/16]

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 120 and 121 together.

The local authorities in Cavan and Monaghan were notified in April 2015 of social housing delivery targets and provisional funding allocations out to end-2017. These are available on my Department’s website at the following link: . Together, these two local authorities have a target to deliver 445 social housing units for the period out to 2017, supported by an allocation of €24 million, to be invested in a combination of building, buying and leasing schemes.

Both local authorities have made proposals in respect of new social housing delivery via capital-funded programmes, which have been approved by my Department; these are set out in announcements made in May 2015, July 2015 and January 2016 and included 56 new units of accommodation in respect of Cavan and Monaghan, supported by investment of some €6.3 million, details of which are available on my Department’s website at the following links:

.

Since then, 79 additional social housing units have been approved for Cavan and Monaghan and added to their pipeline, as set out in the following table.

The level of funding that will be provided to the Cavan and Monaghan local authorities for housing related activity in 2017 will be directly linked to the scale of delivery achieved by the local authorities on these schemes and any other schemes currently being progressed which were approved prior to May 2015, such as the delivery by Respond! of 7 units of accommodation at Convent Lands, Carrickmacross, which is currently under construction and due for completion in Q1 2017. I am keen that these are advanced as soon as possible and funding will be allocated to these in line with their delivery.

There is also a range of housing stock improvement initiatives funded through my Department, such as the energy efficiency retrofitting programme, adaptations to houses for people with a disability and the elderly, and returning vacant properties to productive use; 2017 allocations for these schemes will issue to all local authorities, including Cavan and Monaghan, early in the New Year.

Local authorities also use a variety of current funded mechanisms to secure social housing including the Social Housing Current Expenditure Programme (SHCEP), Housing Assistance Payment (HAP) and Rental Accommodation Scheme (RAS) programmes which my Department will continue to support in 2017 and beyond.

The SHCEP is currently funding 36 operational units in Cavan and Monaghan. An additional 51 units have been approved for leasing by two Approved Housing Bodies (AHBs) and are anticipated to become operational by the end of 2016, bringing the total number of operational units to 87. These 87 units will continue to be funded by SHCEP in 2017 in addition to any additional new units sourced by the LAs or AHBs.

Support is also provided by my Department to AHBs under the Capital Advance Leasing Facility for the delivery of new social housing. This funding approach is being used to support the acquisition and construction of 55 additional units by three AHBs in Cavan and Monaghan. Delivery is contingent on AHBs securing the balance of funding required from either private finance or other borrowings. If successful, it is anticipated that these 55 units will be delivered by the end of 2017. Locations include Kingscourt, Clones and Carrickmacross.

The HAP is currently available in 19 local authority areas, including Monaghan County Council, and to eligible homeless households in the Dublin local authorities under the Homeless HAP pilot scheme. Since Monaghan’s commencement of the HAP statutory pilot scheme on 1 October 2014, almost 350 households have been supported to date and HAP support will continue into 2017 and beyond. There are currently more than 15,000 households nationally being supported by the scheme and 10,690 of these tenancies have been set-up in 2016 to date. The scheme is being extended on a statutory basis to a further nine local authorities, including Cavan County Council, on 1 December 2016, subject to the necessary Regulations being in place.

In relation to RAS, Cavan County Council’s end of year 2015 activity report indicated that there were 562 tenancies supported by the scheme. At the end of 2015, Monaghan County Council reported that there were 256 tenancies supported by RAS. These tenancies will continue to be supported into 2017 and beyond in addition to new tenancies which are added in 2016 and 2017.