John Lahart (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail)
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609. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government the amount of the €5 billion set aside for the financing of the construction of social homes that has been spent since the announcement of the Rebuilding Ireland action plan; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [41502/17]

Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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A funding investment of €5.35 billion is being provided to support the implementation of the Rebuilding Ireland Action Plan for Housing and Homelessness which aims to deliver 47,000 social housing units through build, refurbishment, acquisitions and leasing, over the period to 2021.  This level of investment ensures that funding is available to all local authorities to advance their social housing construction programme.

Social housing construction is funded under a range of different initiatives such as local authority construction, turnkey developments, rapid delivery, regeneration programmes and construction and turnkey developments by approved housing bodies.  Since the publication of Rebuilding Ireland in July 2016, over €0.308 billion has been expended on social housing construction projects.  

More broadly, a total of €0.935 billion was expended in 2016 on the implementation of the full range of housing programmes, which resulted in the delivery of social housing solutions for over 19,000 households.  In Budget 2017, an increased investment of €1.3 billion was provided for housing, which is supporting the delivery of over 21,000 social housing solutions this year.

My Department now publishes, on a quarterly basis, a comprehensive status report of all social housing construction schemes for all local authority areas showing details such as their locations, a range of information relating to their advancement, including those delivered and those progressing through planning, design and construction. The most recent of these reports covers the period up to the end of Quarter 2 2017 and lists circa 700 approved social housing construction schemes, delivering over 11,000 units. The report can be accessed at the following link: http://rebuildingireland.ie/news/social-housing-schemes-2017/. 

Further project approvals are being added to the construction programme as projects are developed by local authorities and approved housing bodies. I am keen that all local authorities advance their social housing projects as speedily as possible and I have assured them that funding is in place to support their activity in this regard.  Indeed, I announced recently that the available funding for social housing is to be reorientated further towards direct build projects.  In 2018 alone, this will see the target of 3,000 newly built social housing units increase by almost 30% to 3,800 and this reorientation will continue over the life of Rebuilding Ireland to end 2021.