Written answers

Thursday, 11 May 2023

Department of Housing, Planning, and Local Government

Housing Provision

Photo of Eoin Ó BroinEoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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215. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government the number of homes for the over-55s list and for rightsizing funded by his Department in 2020, 2021 and 2022; and the number due to be delivered in 2023. [22279/23]

Photo of Darragh O'BrienDarragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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The initiation, design, planning, development and management of housing projects is a matter for local authorities in exercise of their statutory functions.  As such, it is a matter for the local authorities to decide on the number and type of dwellings it will provide for any specific group within their overall planning for housing delivery. 

In addition, an Approved Housing Body (AHB) seeking funding from my Department to provide housing must, in the first instance, apply to the local authority in their area. Funding provided to AHBs to support social housing is made available, as appropriate, by my Department through local authorities who, as the statutory housing authorities, are the decision makers in relation to the suitability of a proposed social housing project.

Social housing is delivered across a range of funding models for housing through my Department including SHCIP, CAS, and CALF and age specific housing is provided within these schemes.

However, disaggregated data is not available on the numbers provided to any specific group. The information sought is not available in my Department and may be available from the respective local authorities

Housing for All (published in September 2021) provides a new housing plan for Ireland to 2030 with the overall objective that every citizen in the State should have access to good quality homes through a steady supply of housing in the right locations, with economic, social and environmental sustainability built into the system. The strategy commits to increasing the housing options available to older people to facilitate ageing in place with dignity and independence, including the development of a national policy on rightsizing.

My Department is advancing work on the development of this national policy and exploration of the options to support and incentivise rightsizing on a voluntary basis with the objective of optimising the potential for more efficient use of under occupied existing private and social housing stock. The development of a national rightsizing policy is having regard to a focused stakeholder consultation undertaken in the latter part of 2022 and existing local authority approaches to rightsizing for social housing. My Department is working on bringing forward a draft national policy in the coming months.

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