Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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115. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government if he will outline the allocation and expenditure of the urban regeneration and development fund call 3–tackling long-term vacancy and dereliction €150 million revolving fund, to date, by local authority, in tabular form; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [10065/25]

James Browne (Wexford, Fianna Fail)
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A flagship element of Project Ireland 2040, the Urban Regeneration and Development Fund (URDF) was one of four funds established under the National Development Plan (NDP) 2018 – 2027. Launched in 2018 with committed Exchequer funding of €2 billion, the review of the NDP in 2021 extended the URDF programme to 2030.

To date, there have been three rounds of funding provided under the URDF with approximately €1.9 billion allocated. Under Call 1 and Call 2, 132 proposals comprising of some 430 individual projects were approved for funding.

While Call 1 and 2 were for specific urban regeneration and development projects, in January 2023 a third round of funding to address long term vacancy and dereliction, and support the key objectives of Housing for All and Town Centre First, was announced. A shift in focus from previous rounds of funding, Call 3 provided a €150 million revolving fund for local authorities to acquire long term vacant or derelict properties in URDF eligible towns and cities.

Acquired properties are then offered by local authorities for private sale at market value to those who in return will commit to bringing the property back into residential use. Proceeds from the sale of these properties will be used to replenish the fund, allowing a local authority to establish a rolling programme to tackle long-term vacancy and dereliction without a requirement for borrowing and the associated financial risk.

Following a consultation process with the local authorities, formal approval in principle was issued to each local authority for a programme of property acquisitions in Q3 2023. With further assessment and engagement by local authorities throughout 2024, properties have continued to be added to the approved acquisition programme.

On completion of a one-year review of the Call 3 programme in October 2024 a total of 1,297 residential and commercial properties were approved by the Department for inclusion on the approved programmes. Of these, 47 properties were acquired by local authorities, with a further 70 in the process of being acquired either by agreement or by CPO. 262 of these properties were also being brought back into use or put up for sale by the original owner.

It is encouraging to note that, following initial engagement by local authorities with property owners, some 262 properties were being brought back into use by the owner without the need for further local authority intervention. A further 72 properties were being dealt with under different funding programmes (Social Housing etc.) and 117 were either acquired or the process to purchase the property had begun. Together with 170 properties that the programme identified were, in fact, not vacant, nearly 50% of the properties approved onto the programme were actively coming out of vacancy/dereliction.

I look forward to this trend continuing on publication of a further review to be carried out in the coming months.

In terms of URDF funding provided under Call 3, €142.5 million has been allocated to local authorities to date. As a signal of Government commitment to this initiative local authorities received 20% of their financial allocations by way of forward funding, so that they were well resourced to begin tackling this issue. Further details of the allocations per local authority and the funding spent to date are outlined in the table below.