John Curran (Dublin Mid West, Fianna Fail)
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545. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government the requests for funding submitted by each local authority and the drawdown of funding to each authority under the LIHAF scheme to date; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [41084/18]

Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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As a key initiative of the Rebuilding Ireland Action Plan for Housing and Homelessness, the Local Infrastructure Housing Activation Fund (LIHAF) is designed to fund the provision of public off-site infrastructure to relieve critical infrastructure blockages and enable housing developments to be built on key sites at scale.

Funding of €200 million was originally provided under LIHAF, of which €150 million is funded by the Exchequer and local authorities fund €50 million. 30 projects received final approval at a total cost of €195.71 million, of which €146.69 million will be funded by the Exchequer and local authorities will fund the balance.

The successful project cycle requires careful planning at the initial stage. The design, planning and procurement phases are not especially costly in terms of the scale of an overall project, with the bulk of expenditure arising during the construction phase. Thus far, most projects have been at the design and planning stages and this is reflected in the level of funding drawdowns to date. As the projects progress to construction, site activity and drawdowns will significantly escalate and it is expected that up to a third of the projects will be at construction phase by end 2018. Funding for LIHAF is ring-fenced within the overall housing budget and will be available for local authorities to draw down over the lifetime of the projects.

The following table details drawdown for 2017 and the first two quarters of 2018. My Department recently invited local authorities to submit claims in respect of quarter three of 2018.

Further details on all of the above projects are available at .