Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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371. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government the additional funding required to increase the Vote 34 subhead A7, capital assistance scheme outputs target to 1,000 units. [18147/22]

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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Under my Department’s Capital Assistance Scheme (CAS), capital funding of up to 100% of project costs is advanced by local authorities to Approved Housing Bodies (AHBs) to provide housing for specific categories of housing need including older people, persons/families who are homeless and people with a disability. CAS funding also supports other important and emerging areas of housing need including the development of refuges for victims of Domestic, Sexual and Gender Based Violence, housing for care leavers (people exiting State care at the age of 18), and de-congregation (people with a disability being enabled to move from large institutions (congregated settings) to their own homes in the community with the support they need.

Exchequer funding of €96 million in 2021 delivered 352 units of independent living accommodation for a range of priority categories of housing need and 150 bed spaces for single homeless individuals although it should be noted that delivery of new accommodation units does not always arise in the same year as expenditure and projects may cross a number of payment periods. At the same time, CAS accommodation delivery can range from atypically large units for people with physical disability to group homes for people with intellectual disability to domestic violence refuges and the cost of delivering additional CAS housing will depend on which categories are involved. While the cost per bedroom under CAS build projects varies significantly, the average cost in 2021 was €130,915. The data involved is drawn from a variety of project types ranging from new greenfield build, brownfield, turnkey and renewal projects.

Another factor in relation to additional delivery under CAS is the capacity of the AHBs involved which are frequently smaller, locally-based organisations.