Rory Hearne (Dublin North-West, Social Democrats)
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709. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government if he will provide the number of acquisitions made under social housing second hand acquisitions programme in 2024 and to date in 2025, by property size (one bedroom, two bedroom etc), by local authority, in tabular form; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [23514/25]

James Browne (Wexford, Fianna Fail)
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The clear focus of Government is to increase the supply of new build social and affordable homes. Increasing the overall housing supply is key to addressing the housing challenge and in particular preventing and ultimately eliminating long term homelessness.

Second hand Social Housing Acquisitions targets, including Tenant in Situ acquisitions, were increased by way of Government decision in 2023 as a short term response to the reported uplift in sales by landlords of homes which were within the HAP and RAS schemes in order to prevent potential homelessness where other solutions could not be found for the affected tenants.

Since the Government decision to increase social housing acquisitions in 2023, my Department has consistently engaged with local authorities.

The €325 million allocation I announced on 31 March 2025 has been made available to our local authorities for their social housing second-hand acquisitions activity in 2025, with individual allocations for the local authorities being notified to them on 1 April 2025. This is part of almost €2 billion in total which is supporting local authorities and approved housing bodies to deliver new social homes in 2025. Our main emphasis remains on constructing new homes and that unquestionably, is the correct approach.

It will be a matter for the local authorities to decide how they use this funding within the priority categories being supported by the programme. I am keen that they obtain good value for money in supporting priority tenants and that they maximise the number of acquisitions.

The table below sets out the data supplied by individual local authorities in relation to the house type for acquisitions in 2024. This data represents 1,497 of the 1,501 acquisitions completed and my Department is working with local authorities to obtain data for the outstanding units. Data for Q1 2025 will be published later this year.

My Department publishes comprehensive programme-level statistics on affordable and social housing delivery activity by local authorities and delivery partners in each local authority area. Data for the years 2022 up to Q4 2024 is published on the statistics page of my Department’s website at the following link: