Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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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 and is the first multi-annual fully funded housing plan in the history of the State. The Plan is supported by an investment package of over €4 billion per annum, through an overall combination of €12 billion in direct Exchequer funding, €3.5 billion investment through the Land Development Agency (LDA) and €5 billion lending through the Housing Finance Agency (HFA).

Budget 2024 again provides record levels of investment by this Government to support housing delivery and the continued implementation of Housing for All. The total Exchequer funding being made available for the delivery of housing programmes is €4.1 billion, comprising Capital funding of €2.6 billion and Current funding of €1.5 billion.

The Capital provision of €2.6 billion will be supplemented by LDA investment of €978 million and HFA lending of €1.5 billion, resulting in an overall capital provision of €5.1 billion.

The 2024 funding provision will support over 28,000 additional households in 2024, through meeting the social housing needs of almost 22,000 households and supporting a further 6,400 households to buy or rent at an affordable price.

In addition to the delivery of new social and affordable homes, the funding secured in 2024 will also support the continued and enhanced delivery of a wide range of housing programmes. These programmes provide targeted support to meet individual housing need, including homelessness, tackling vacancy, retrofitting, upgrading and defects programmes and the provision of supports for older people, people with a disability and the Traveller Community.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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In 2022 10,263 new social homes were delivered, including 7,433 new-build homes which represented the highest delivery of new build social housing since 1975. In the first half of 2023, 2,298 new social homes were delivered, including 1,401 new-build homes.

Social housing delivery is traditionally weighted to the second half end of the year so we do expect to see a significant increase, similar to 2022, where there was strong delivery, particularly in the final quarter of 2022 with over 6,000 new social homes provided across the build (4,729) Acquisition (635) and Lease (664) delivery streams. I expect this trend will continue and we will see a significant increase in all delivery.

As the Deputy will be aware from the Social Housing Construction Status Report, which my Department published on a quarterly basis, there is a strong pipeline of over 22,600 social homes either on site or at various stages of the design and procurement process.

In overall terms, the outlook for 2023 is positive. Total expenditure on Housing to the end of October was €2.6bn which is €617m ahead of the same period in 2022. My Department will continue to work assertively with local authorities, AHBs, the LDA, and all delivery partners to ramp up the scale of activity across all areas in 2023 and moving forward in future years.