Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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The National Planning Framework (NPF) in Ireland includes National Policy Objective 37, which mandates a Housing Need and Demand Assessment (HNDA) in each local authority area. The HNDA aims to ensure long-term strategic housing needs are met across all tenures, providing a robust evidence base to support decisions about new housing supply, investment, and housing-related services.

Several development plans had already been initiated when the initial HNDA was published, and interim HNDA methodologies were adopted. Five local authorities, including Dublin City Council, Kildare County Council, Kerry County Council, Clare County Council, and Galway City County Council, have all adopted and completed a HNDA for their respective development plans. The timeline for each of the local authorities' Development Plans are set out in the table attached.

The HNDA uses a standardised methodology to quantify current and projected housing needs in a particular local authority area, including the needs of older people. It is intended to be the central evidence base used to inform Housing Strategy preparation, which will in turn inform the housing policies of the county or city development plan.

In November 2023, the government published its Housing for All Action Plan Update, which sets the government’s approach to reviewing and refreshing the current targets and projections. The HNDA framework and Housing for All housing targets will be reviewed as part of this work, with the revision to be completed in 2024, providing refreshed targets for the period 2025 onwards.

This work will be informed by independent, peer-reviewed research by the ESRI, an update to the ESRI’s previous research, to support the NPF revision and any change to the housing targets and their spatial distribution. The refresh of targets will take into account unmet need in previous years, population growth, including from significant inward migration in recent years, and updated assumptions regarding household sizes. The ESRI work will be finished in Q1 2024, with provisional housing targets developed and published shortly thereafter.

Final housing targets for the period 2025 onwards, including revised targets for social, affordable, private rental and private ownership, will be published in mid-2024.