Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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675. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government if he will initiate a meeting between the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, the chairperson of the board of Horse Racing Ireland and the chief executive of Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council with a view to releasing an unused vacant site (details supplied) to the local authority for the provision of mixed tenure, social and affordable housing. [7198/18]

Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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I assume the Deputy is referring to the site VS.0001 listed on the Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council Vacant Site Register.

As the owner of the site, Horse Racing Ireland has primary responsibility for any future plans for its development. My Department will continue to work with all State bodies, including local authorities, to ensure, where appropriate, housing is delivered from publicly owned sites that are available for development.

I anticipate that there is significant potential for the delivery of social and affordable homes from local authority lands, and indeed from the broader State land bank. Following on from the Housing Summit on 22 January, I have asked local authority Chief Executives to submit, in the coming weeks, an outline of their respective affordable housing programmes, with a particular emphasis on Dublin, Galway, and Cork, where there is the greatest affordability gap. As part of this exercise, I have also asked local authorities to consider State-owned sites in their areas that would be strategically important for them, in terms of the delivery of housing. The overall scale of delivery, and timescales, will be informed by these responses.

The delivery of additional social and affordable homes, to buy or rent, will rely on the State developing the full potential of its residential land bank. In the context of my Department's role in driving and co-ordinating housing delivery, I am establishing a dedicated Residential Land Management and Development Group to oversee this important work.