Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein)
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238. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government if local authorities have received, or are in the process of receiving, debt write offs on loans they acquired under the land aggregation scheme; the local authorities which have received debt write offs on such loans, in tabular form; and the process for the application of debt write offs under the scheme. [2219/18]

Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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The Land Aggregation Scheme was introduced in 2010 as part of revised arrangements for the funding of land for housing purposes.  The primary purpose of the Scheme was to assist in the gradual unwinding of loans taken out by housing authorities to purchase land for the social and affordable housing investment programme.  

Local authorities were invited to apply to my Department to recoup the cost of outstanding loans on housing land, where these loans were due to mature and where it was considered unlikely that land would be developed in the short to medium term. The application process required a formal submission by the local authority, including confirmation of having complied with the requirements under Section 103 of the Local Government Act 2001, as amended, in respect of notifying members of intention to dispose of land.

An initial appraisal of the land, to determine its suitability for inclusion in the scheme, was carried out by the Housing Agency, as well as a due diligence assessment.  Subject to available funding, my Department discharged the loans and the sites transferred to the ownership of the Housing Agency. 

Applications to the value of some €163 million in loans were accepted into the Land Aggregation Scheme. The figure of €163 million includes €111 million in respect of loans which were fully redeemed by local authorities with funding recouped from my Department, under the original terms of the Scheme. 

The remaining €52 million accepted into the Land Aggregation Scheme is in the form of annuity loans, for which local authorities are making repayments to the Housing Finance Agency.  Such annuity repayments are recoupable from my Department, subject to the local authority complying with terms of the Scheme.

Local authorities were advised of the discontinuance of the Scheme, in respect of new applications, in 2013. 

The land involved continues to be available for housing and was included on the Rebuilding Ireland land mapping exercise.

Details of the sites accepted into the Land Aggregation Scheme are set out in the following tables.

Table 1: Sites accepted under the first phase of the Scheme(Loan capital & interest fully redeemed).

Table 2: Sites accepted under the second phase of the Scheme (Annuity repayments recoupable from the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government).