Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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Under Housing for All the Government will deliver 54,000 affordable homes between now and 2030. The Land Development Agency (LDA) represents a crucial lever in the Government’s delivery of affordable and social homes, coordinating relevant public lands within State control and activating key underutilised sites to maximise housing delivery.

The LDA has an immediate focus on managing the State’s own lands to develop new homes and regenerate under-utilised sites. In the longer-term, it will assemble strategic land-banks from a mix of public and private lands making these available for housing in a controlled manner, which is expected to bring essential more long-term stability to the Irish housing market. It is also tasked with unlocking stalled private, planning-consented developments in the shorter-term through Project Tosaigh, its market engagement initiative.

Under the first phase of Project Tosaigh the LDA delivered its first cost rental homes in 2022 and over 2,500 social, affordable purchase and cost rental homes have since either been delivered, contracted or approved by the LDA Investment Committee. A process to establish a panel of delivery partners with the intention of scaling up and accelerating delivery through a second phase of Project Tosaigh has also commenced. It is anticipated that the panel will be established and the first set of sites agreed in the coming months.

The LDA currently has access to €1.25bn of equity capital from the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund (ISIF) and a further €1.25bn of borrowings as provided for under the LDA Act. Of the €1.25bn available through ISIF, the LDA has to date drawn down €625m of this funding - €100million on establishment, and a further €525million paid over two tranches in H1 2023. Approval was granted for the drawdown of a further €300m in early November 2023. The LDA has sufficient funding at present and has so far not availed of its borrowing powers.

Government has agreed to the further investment of up to €1.25 billion in equity capital in the LDA from ISIF and is currently making legislative provision for this.