Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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528. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government if his attention has been drawn to contract restrictions on apartment owners selling their apartments to local authorities or approved housing bodies for social housing; if so, if he will discuss the matter with the Minister for Justice to examine if this restriction can be overcome by way of legislation or regulation in order to allow such properties be acquired for social or affordable housing; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [1008/23]

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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My Department is not aware of any instances where a local authority or Approved Housing Body has been prevented by contract restrictions from acquiring apartments for social housing.

For example, The Housing Agency has purchased hundreds of apartments over several years, in its own capacity and on trust for local authorities, and the Agency has informed my Department that it not been prevented from acquiring an apartment by a contract restriction preventing the owner from selling their apartment for social housing use.

I understand certain planning permission restrictions may prevent the sale, for example, of build-to-rent units for a period of 15 years. Similarly, the head lease for some holiday home developments may include provisions requiring the pooling of rental income from properties and this may also prevent an apartment being successfully acquired for social housing. However, these restrictions are not specifically intended to prevent a sale of a unit for social housing and apply irrespective of the intended use.

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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529. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government if he intends to revise the headline targets underpinning his housing plan; if so, the breakdown of those targets by tenure type; and when he intends to publish the revised targets. [1009/23]

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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530. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government the inputs that are used by his Department when using the housing need and demand assessment to determine the annual social and affordable housing targets as set out in the housing plan. [1010/23]

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 529 and 530 together.

The Housing Demand and Need Assessment (HNDA) framework and tool assists local authorities develop long-term views of housing demand and need and provide a robust evidence-base to support decisions about new housing supply, wider investment and housing related services that inform an overall national housing profile.

The HNDA tool helps project housing demand estimates across four tenures, namely social, affordable, private rental and private ownership. Generally, it does this by projecting population growth and distribution across and within local authorities, as well as forecasting house prices, rent prices and incomes to make an assessment of the future affordability of the different housing tenures. The tool is populated by a range of different demographic, income, and house and rental price scenarios and assumptions for this purpose.

Using the ESRI's household projections and deploying the tool's Convergence Scenario, the HNDA methodology produced an estimated housing need across the four tenures for the period to 2030. This estimate underpinned the annual average target of 33,000 homes per year in Housing for All and informed local authority housing supply targets to 2030, including social and affordable housing.

It is intended to review the HNDA framework, including the tool and underlying demographic, income, house and rental price scenarios and assumptions this year when the detailed Census data are available in Q2 2023.

As a critical element of this work, the ESRI will update its research on structural housing demand. I expect this work to be completed towards end-2023.

The Housing for All Action Plan Update was published on 2 November 2022. The section entitled “Planning the required number of homes”, sets out the Government’s approach to reviewing current targets and projections including the refreshing of the overall national housing targets and the subsets of social, affordable and market delivery, having regard to progress already made, to ensure that the overall housing need is met in line with the original vision of Housing for All. The Housing for All Action Plan Update can be accessed on my Department’s website at the following link: www.gov.ie/en/publication/da0d1-action-plan-update-and-q3-2022-progress-report/.

The HNDA tool and guidelines for use and its data sources are available to view on www.gov.ie/en/publication/eaa99-housing-need-and-demand-assessment-hnda/