Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

Housing for All is the Government’s plan to increase the supply of housing to an average of 33,000 per year over the next decade. This includes the delivery of 90,000 social homes, 36,000 affordable purchase homes and 18,000 cost rental homes. The delivery of the affordable purchase and cost rental homes will be facilitated by local authorities, Approved Housing Bodies (AHBs), the Land Development Agency (LDA) and through a strategic partnership between the State and retail banks.

Under Housing for All, the Government will deliver 47,600 new build social homes; 3,500 social homes through long-term leasing and 28,500 new affordable homes in the period 2022-2026. In September 2021, I issued social housing targets to each local authority for the period 2022-2026. Louth County Council has a target to deliver 156 new build social homes in 2023.

In March 2022, Louth County Council were assigned a target to deliver 226 Affordable Housing Fund supported homes by 2026. It should be noted that this excludes affordable purchase and cost rental delivery via the Land Development Agency and Approved Housing Bodies. Targets issued to local authorities are based on the result of individual local authorities Housing Needs and Demand Assessments (HNDA).

A key action of Housing for All is that local authorities developed and submitted Housing Delivery Action Plans to include details of social and affordable housing delivery. The Plans set out details of both social and affordable housing delivery as appropriate over the period 2022-2026, in line with targets set under Housing for All. The Plans also include details of the locations and delivery streams for social housing schemes. Louth County Council’s plan is available on their website at this link: www.louthcoco.ie/en/services/housing/housing-delivery-action-plan/

My Department publishes comprehensive programme level statistics on a quarterly basis on social housing delivery activity. This data is available to the end of Quarter 3 2022, and is published on the statistics page of my Department’s website, at the following link: www.gov.ie/en/collection/6060e-overall-social-housing-provision/.

Local authorities have been begun collating information on the delivery of affordable homes in their area in the same manner as is currently done for social housing. It is intended that information across all delivery streams will be gathered by my Department and I expect that my Department will be in a position to begin reporting on affordable delivery in national quarterly delivery statistics in Quarter 1 2023.