Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)
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34. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government when an affordable housing scheme will be introduced; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [52196/17]

Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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The Government acknowledges the affordability pressures faced by households with low to moderate incomes in particular parts of the country. It is precisely for that reason that Rebuilding Ireland has prioritised the supply of new homes to meet current and pent-up demand as well as helping to moderate house prices and rents.

For households in the lowest income brackets, I am prioritising the social housing build programme, with an investment of over €6bn committed under Rebuilding Ireland, to increase the overall delivery to 50,000 new social homes by 2021. Qualifying households can also avail of other housing supports such as the Housing Assistance Payments and Rental Assistance schemes and other targeted programmes.

The Government is also committed to ensuring that there is a supply of and access to affordable homes.  A range of measures have been taken to address this, for example, in relation to planning reforms to provide flexibility and certainty in delivering viable housing schemes and apartment developments in the right locations, and the provision of funding to service and open up housing lands through the Local Infrastructure Housing Activation Fund (LIHAF), to deliver new homes that are more viable and more affordable than would otherwise be the case.  Furthermore, the introduction of Rent Pressure Zones, and mixed-tenure housing projects on publicly owned land, with two major sites in Dublin, encompassing some 1,500 new homes, progressing through procurement, are also beginning to have a positive impact.

In Budget 2018, the Government removed significant obstacles to building more homes, more quickly, and at more affordable prices by:

- Investing more in direct house-building by the State;

- Removing the Capital Gains Tax incentive to hold on to residential land;

- Escalating penalties for land hoarding; and

- Providing a new, more affordable finance vehicle for builders through House Building Finance Ireland (HBFI).

Based on all relevant indicators, it is clear that the supply based measures under Rebuilding Ireland are beginning to work, with recent housing output indicators showing significant upward trends:

- Planning permissions are up 49%, with 19,246 new homes granted planning permission in the 12 months to end-June 2017;

- Commencement Notices are up by 37%, with notices for 17,151 new homes nationwide submitted in the year to end-October 2017;

- As an indicator of multi-unit developments, there were 9,441 housing guarantee registrations recorded nationally in the 12 months to October 2017 (up 86% year on year).

- ESB connections to the national grid are up 26%, at 18,197 homes in the 12 months to end-October, with 8,400 of these in the Greater Dublin Area.

Notwithstanding this, further measures are being developed, including in relation to apartment development viability. I am also considering the wider issue of housing affordability as part of the targeted review of Rebuilding Ireland, including the deployment of the funding of €25 million announced in Budget 2018 to unlock local authority owned lands specifically for affordable housing.  I expect to be making further announcements on these issues shortly.