Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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1196. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government if his Department received applications for capital funding pending from the various local authorities for house building or renovation purposes; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [45483/19]

Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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My Department receives social housing proposals from local authorities on a continuous basis, in the context of the delivery targets each authority is working towards under Rebuilding Ireland and in the context of the significant funding that is available to support this activity.

For 2019 alone, funding of €2.4 billion is being provided for all housing programmes, with a further €2.63 billion available in 2020. This investment will see the housing needs of almost 27,400 households being met in 2019, of which 10,000 will be new social housing homes delivered through build, acquisition and long term leasing programmes. In 2020, we are targeting the delivery of over 11,000 homes though build, acquisition and leasing.

The scale of the funding available has allowed us to approve a significant social housing build programme nationally, a detailed breakdown of which is contained in the Social Housing Construction Status Report which is updated and published on a quarterly basis. The report covering the period up to the end of Quarter 2 of 2019, is available on the Rebuilding Ireland website at .

We also have a range of programmes and initiatives available to local authorities to assist them to improve their existing social housing stock, for example, under the energy efficiency retrofitting programme for local authority social housing, where over 70,700 social homes have been insulated to date with funding support from the exchequer of some €139 million. The budget for this programme in 2019 is €25 million.

With the ready availability of funding and with each local authority working to deliver targets under Rebuilding Ireland, we will continue to receive and approve capital funding to the authorities on a daily basis and I have assured local authorities of the continued availability of this support for their work to deliver new social homes.