Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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Local authorities already have powers to make low-cost sites available to individuals, who are qualified for social housing support, and collectively, to voluntary or co-operative not-for-profit housing associations.

In addition, in order to support the affordable housing programmes of local authorities, the Government has committed €310 million, over the three years 2019 to 2021, under the Serviced Sites Fund (SSF) announced as part of Budget 2019. The funding is available for key facilitating infrastructure, on public lands, to support the provision of affordable homes to purchase or rent. I envisage a maximum amount of SSF funding of €50,000 per affordable home and on this basis at least 6,200 affordable homes could be facilitated.

A first call for proposals under the Fund issued to the four Dublin local authorities, Kildare, Meath, Wicklow, Louth and Cork County Councils, and Cork and Galway City Councils. Fifteen proposals were received, from nine of the local authorities targeted under this first call and I expect to announce funding decisions in relation to these applications shortly. I expect infrastructure works on approved projects to begin as soon as possible thereafter and delivery of affordable homes from late 2019/early 2020 onwards.

More broadly, all local authorities are carrying out economic assessments of the requirement for affordable housing in their areas and the viability to deliver such affordable housing from their sites. My Department hosted a workshop for local authorities last week to discuss these issues.

A second call for proposals under the Fund will be made shortly. The scope of that call will be influenced by the information received from local authorities, as part of the aforementioned assessments, which they have been requested to submit by 30 November.

In terms of the type of affordable housing that will be delivered on local authority sites it may be affordable housing for purchase, for example, under the recently commenced provisions of Part 5 of the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2009, or cost rental, which is being advanced on a number of pilot sites before being rolled out further. The Regulations to support the operation of Part 5 will be finalised shortly.

I also introduced a new Rebuilding Ireland Home Loan to enable credit-worthy first-time buyers to access sustainable mortgage lending to purchase new or second-hand properties within a suitable price range.

Finally, first-time buyers can also avail of the Help-To-Buy Scheme, which is intended to alleviate some of the challenges faced by first-time buyers in providing the required 10% deposit of the market value of the property.