Martin Daly (Roscommon-Galway, Fianna Fail)
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42. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government the specific accountability measures that are being put in place to ensure that local authorities meet their housing delivery targets, given ongoing concerns from the construction sector regarding constant delays, objections, and bottlenecks in planning and approvals. [65829/25]

Martin Daly (Roscommon-Galway, Fianna Fail)
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115. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government the mechanisms he will introduce, in light of the establishment of the Housing Activation Office, to monitor and enforce the performance of local authorities in progressing housing projects; and the way in which his Department intends to address councils that consistently fail to deliver homes in a timely manner. [65830/25]

James Browne (Wexford, Fianna Fail)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 42 and 115 together.

Roadblocks to delivery must be removed to support activation of land at scale and the Housing Activation Office will be critical in this regard. The Housing Activation office comprises senior and experienced staff from within my Department, in addition to senior specialists seconded from Uisce Éireann, ESB Networks, the National Transport Authority, Transport Infrastructure Ireland and the local government sector. The Office is actively engaged in identifying barriers to housing delivery and is coordinating with local authorities and infrastructure agencies to address these barriers.

In the coming months I will be bringing forward a new Housing Infrastructure Investment Fund, with multi-year funding being made available to support direct investment in critical housing infrastructure where it can be accelerated and delivered in the short term. This new fund will operate in addition to existing investment programmes such as the Local Infrastructure Housing Activation Fund and the Urban Regeneration and Development Fund, which will continue to play a key role alongside the Housing Infrastructure Investment Fund.

This joined-up approach will help accelerate housing delivery by unblocking infrastructure constraints and ensuring that investment is targeted to where it can have the greatest impact. This will help support local authorities in achieving their housing targets in line with the Revised National Planning Framework.

My Department publishes comprehensive programme-level statistics on a quarterly basis on social and affordable housing delivery activity by local authorities and Approved Housing Bodies (AHBs) in each local authority, on a local authority basis. Data on social housing delivery against targets is also published. This data is available to the end of Q2 2025 and is published on the statistics page of my Department’s website at the following link: www.gov.ie/en/collection/6060e-overall-social-housing-provision/.

My Department also publishes the Social Housing Construction Status Report (CSR), which provides details of social housing developments, their location and their funding programme that have been completed, are under construction or are progressing through the various stages of the design and tender processes. The most recent publication was for Quarter 2 2025. All CSRs are available at the following link: www.gov.ie/en/collection/cb885-social-housing-construction-projects-status-reports/.

A version of the CSR file can also be downloaded for analysis by local authority, location etc. at this link: .

The delivery performance of local authorities against their targets under Housing for All is kept under continual review by my Department. Beginning this year, I started publishing the social housing delivery achieved by all local authorities – as set against their targets – as part of the quarterly statistics published. This will allow for greater transparency and engagement with the delivery of new-build housing at a local level.

Under Delivery Homes, Building Communities I will establish a new performance fund in order to incentivise local authorities to not just meet but exceed their annual ‘own build’ social housing targets. Where local authorities exceed annual ‘own build’ social housing targets they will receive additional discretionary funding for the delivery of community and placemaking initiatives and projects, with an important role for elected members in how this funding is spent.

To further support this ‘new build’ teams, ring-fenced from other local authority work and dedicated solely to social and affordable ‘new build’ housing projects will be established which will be fully funded by my Department through reimbursement to local authorities on a performance pay basis.

The Department proactively engages with the housing delivery partners to monitor their delivery of affordable housing supports. Quarterly reports are published on the Department's website, outlining each LA delivery's delivery. These reports are publicly available and can be viewed at www.gov.ie/en/department-of-housing-local-government-and-heritage/collections/overall-social-and-affordable-housing-provision/