Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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55. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government his plans to ensure that public land, zoned for housing, will be developed as 100% social and affordable housing in view of the ongoing housing crisis; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [38403/20]

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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The Programme for Government confirms the priority to increase the supply of social and affordable homes. In the first instance, it is a matter for housing authorities to bring forward optimum proposals for the delivery of housing on their sites maximising the potential from the suite of delivery mechanisms and Exchequer funding streams available from my Department.

Supporting these commitments, Budget 2021 provides a record €3.3 billion for the delivery of housing programmes. This represents an increase of €641m or 24% on 2020. Overall 50,000 new social homes are planned for delivery over the next 5 years, 12,500 of which are targeted for delivery next year including 9,500 new builds.

I am also providing Capital funding of €468 million specifically to cover affordability measures including two new affordable housing schemes - the Affordable Purchase Shared Equity Scheme and the Cost Rental Equity Loan Facility. These will build on existing schemes to provide more affordable homes to purchase and rent in 2021. The Services Sites Fund is also being expanded and accelerated to help local authorities deliver up to 6,200 more affordable homes from their land.

Taken together, this will see a fundamental refocusing towards the delivery of social and affordable housing working with local authorities and other delivery partners.

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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56. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government the details of the upcoming affordable housing scheme; the cost of affordable to buy homes; the eligibility criteria for the homes; the scheme of allocations for cost rental homes; the system for deciding the rents on the homes; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [38401/20]

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 56 and 58 together.

The Programme for Government makes clear our commitments to provide measures for good-quality housing to purchase or rent at an affordable price. In providing Capital of €468 million towards programmes that will support affordability, Budget 2021 backed up our intentions to deliver on these commitments.

From this sum, €110 million was ring-fenced for two new national schemes to designed to deliver more affordable housing the Affordable Purchase Shared Equity Scheme and the Cost Rental Equity Loan facilityto help deliver Cost Rental homes. Both of these programmes will begin in 2021.

€75 million will be allocated to the affordable purchase shared equity scheme. I intend to target the scheme at first time buyers, who are seeking to buy a new home but who cannot quite secure the full mortgage amount to do so at the present time. Subject to the final qualifying criteria, the scheme would see the State take a limited equity stake in a property, in order to help more people meet the cost of buying a new home with their available mortgage.

To this end, significant preparatory work has already been carried out by my Department working primarily with the Housing Agency and the Department of Finance. Intensive engagement continues with key stakeholders informing the final detailed parameters of the scheme, as well as with home builders to seek to increase the output of new homes in response to the new scheme.

In addition, €35m has been allocated to the new Cost Rental Equity Loan (CREL) facility to support Approved Housing Bodies (AHBs) to deliver approximately 350 Cost Rental homes at scale from next year. This scheme will leverage the proven expertise and capacity of the AHBs, demonstrated in their development and management of social housing units. It will allow cost-covering rents to be set a lower level and so making them more affordable for tenants. Further details on the scheme will be announced in due course.

In addition to these new schemes, I will also progress and accelerate the local authority led scheme to deliver more affordable homes for purchase and rent on public land. The statutory basis for the delivery of affordable new housing for purchase on local authority lands is Part 5 of the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2009.The broad parameters of this scheme will be as follows: aimed at first-time buyers who are low to middle households; homes will be subject to a maximum statutory discount of 40% (relative to the market price), and the local authority maintains a repayable equity share in the properties equivalent to the percentage discount given

Furthermore, €310m is available to local authorities for Serviced Sites infrastructure funding that will support the delivery of up to 6,200 new homes that will be made available under this scheme. The first SSF project that will be deliver affordable homes will be Boherboy Road in Cork City in early next year.

The precise eligibility conditions are currently being developed in light of the on-going policy analysis outlined. I intend to bring forward any necessary provisions to underpin these schemes in a forthcoming Affordable Housing Bill which will be brought to Government in the coming weeks.

Other measures, such as the Help to Buy Scheme and the Rebuilding Ireland Home Loan, are also available to eligible purchasers nationally to make home ownership more affordable.

Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity)
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57. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government if he will increase the number of houses built through direct build local authority construction in view of the large difference in the cost between local authority direct builds and so called turn-key purchases; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [38333/20]

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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The advancement of social housing delivery on a local basis is the responsibility of each individual local authority and they seek to secure the maximum amount of social housing through a range of approaches that represent value for money, speed of delivery and that meet the needs of those on the waiting lists.

The Programme for Government commits to increasing the social housing stock by more than 50,000, the majority of which will be new build social homes by local authorities. Significant funding is available to all local authorities to help bolster their social housing stock and in Budget 2021, the total funding for the delivery of housing programmes is €3.3 billion.

The delivery of local authority-own designed projects on their own sites has been increasing as a proportion of overall social housing delivery and in addition, many local authorities have worked successfully with the construction sector to source delivery of new social homes through turnkey solutions.

Turnkey developments can represent good value for money and can help deal with other issues such as unfinished estates. Ultimately, the homes delivered are newly constructed and become permanent social housing. They are particularly beneficial where local authorities have limited or no lands available to deliver housing in the immediate term in an area of high demand.

Across all local authorities, and all unit types the choice between local authority-led projects and turnkeys needs to be evaluated taking account of factors such as location, house types, specification, abnormal costs, site costs, etc.

Moving forward, in line with the Programme for Government, the majority of the 50,000 new social homes will be new build social homes by local authorities.