Kevin O'Keeffe (Cork East, Fianna Fail)
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285. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government if a request for funding to develop affordable housing has been received from Cork County Council. [14326/19]

Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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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. It is envisaged 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.

The issue of affordable housing is not a requirement throughout the whole country. As such, in order to target funding interventions, in November 2018 local authorities were invited to undertake a financial/economic assessment of each of its sites (not allocated to social housing only) to assess whether provision of affordable homes is economically viable. Local authorities were also asked to assess the broader housing affordability within their area. Following a workshop in December 2018, 19 local authorities returned economic assessments. This included Cork County Council, who carried out such assessments in areas where affordability issues exist on five sites.

In December 2018, approval in principle issued for ten infrastructure projects across five local authority areas, in Dublin and Cork City and County. This first tranche of funding of €43 million will enable delivery of 1,400 affordable homes on local authority lands, including one project in Glanmire in Cork County which will enable delivery of 20 affordable homes. We expect infrastructure works on these projects to begin as soon as possible in 2019 and delivery of affordable homes from 2020 onwards. There are five further projects under active consideration, with the potential to facilitate the delivery of an additional 230 affordable homes.

The economic assessments returned in December 2018 will also form the basis of the 2nd call under the Serviced Sites Fund which it is anticipated will be issued to local authorities next month.