Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Solidarity)
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51. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government his plans to reform the local infrastructure housing activation fund to ensure that affordable housing is provided; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [33432/17]

Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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The aim of the Local Infrastructure Housing Activation Fund (LIHAF) is to relieve critical infrastructural blockages in order to enable the accelerated delivery of housing on key development sites in urban areas with high demand for housing. Dublin, in particular, is suffering from a significant deficit in supply of new homes.

This Fund is key to getting sites moving which would otherwise be inaccessible due to lack of necessary public infrastructure. It is estimated that the targeted investment of €226m will stimulate the early supply of 23,000 new dwellings by 2021 with potential for up to 69,000 units in the longer term, as the sites are fully built out. Funds are being provided to local authorities to build roads, bridges and public amenities such as parks through a public procurement process, and this infrastructure will remain in public ownership and ultimately be for the benefit of housholds living in the vicinity of the infrastructure.

The Fund has been allocated to over 34 projects of varying cost and scale, ranging from €0.7m to build a road which will facilitate 200 houses to be built on one site in Co. Tipperary, to €20m to build road and parks infrastructure in Adamstown, South Dublin, to get 1,000 houses started.

Affordability was a factor in the criteria for the selection of the 34 projects which were approved but it was only one of a number of very important criteria such as strategic fit and the early release of significant scale of new homes. In the vast majority of these projects, such as Adamstown, Kilkenny western environs, Mount Avenue, Dundalk, or Mungret, Limerick, it is anticipated that the housing facilitated by the infrastructure delivery will be pitched at affordable prices and a 10% social housing dividend under Part V will also be secured from each project. Furthermore, State-owned lands will be used in 12 of the projects to facilitate additional social housing, or homes for particular vulnerable groups, such as older people, in accordance with the needs of the individual areas concerned.

Across the Dublin sites, the prices are likely to be higher than the national average, due to market factors such as the land costs and construction costs. However, even in these cases, we have ensured that the State gets a return on its investment by requiring a cost reduction to benefit the private buyer, as well as accelerating large-scale supply which is urgently required. Conversely, setting unrealistic affordability requirements would likely impact on the commercial viability and fundability of the developments, and could delay or stall the developments which the Fund had been created to facilitate.

I am also considering further initiatives and actions to address the issue of affordability in the context of the targeted review of Rebuilding Ireland which my Department has now commenced.