Brendan Ryan (Dublin Fingal, Labour)
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259. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government if consideration is being given to making low-cost sites available to persons in a position to afford to build their own homes in view of the ongoing housing crisis; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [52305/18]

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.

The Government continues to address affordability specifically.  In particular, for those households earning low to moderate annual gross incomes (up to €50,000 for single applicants and €75,000 for dual applicants), a multi-stranded approach is being taken to the targeted delivery of affordable housing.

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.

In this regard, I have issued approval in principle for ten infrastructure projects across five local authority areas, in Dublin and Cork, under the first SSF call for proposals. This first tranche of funding of €43 million will enable the delivery of 1,400 affordable homes on local authority lands. I expect infrastructure works on these projects to begin as soon as possible and delivery of affordable homes from early 2020 onwards. Details of these projects are set out in the following table.

List of projects that have received approval in principle under the SSF first call for proposals

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 month 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 are currently being collated by my Department.

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. These initiatives complement other Government actions which help first-time buyers to buy a home, such as the Help to Buy Scheme and the Rebuilding Ireland Home Loan.