Thomas Byrne
Question:67. Deputy Thomas Byrne asked the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government his plans to increase the number of social and affordable houses in County Meath. [8384/19]
View answerWednesday, 20 February 2019
Questions (67)
Written answers
The Government's Rebuilding Ireland Action Plan for Housing and Homelessness is firmly focused on increasing housing supply and the priority is to support those in society with the greatest housing access and affordability challenges. In that context, the focus is on meeting the housing needs of those in the lower-income categories, particularly those in need of social housing supports, and other households that are most challenged from an affordability perspective, such as first-time buyers. The significant progress being made in these areas is outlined on the Rebuilding Ireland website at www.rebuildingireland.ie and was further supported through Budget 2019, which has provided €2.4 billion for housing purposes this year.
Overall, the Rebuilding Ireland Action Plan will increase the supply of new homes to 25,000 per annum by 2020; deliver an additional 50,000 social housing homes in the period 2016 to 2021; and meet the housing needs of a further 87,000 households through the Housing Assistance Payment scheme and the Rental Accommodation Scheme.
In 2018, in excess of 27,000 households had their social housing need met, significantly ahead of the target set. The level of progress being made is reflected in social housing waiting lists, which have reduced by 22% nationally, from 91,600 households to 71,858, between 2016 and 2018. The Social Housing Delivery Report for 2018 provides further details of delivery last year and is available on the Rebuilding Ireland website at the following link: http://rebuildingireland.ie/install/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Social-Housing-Report-2018.pdf.
Statistical information in relation to social housing delivery across all delivery streams is published on my Department's website at the following link: https://www.housing.gov.ie/node/6338. Statistical information for the full year 2018 has just been published and is available at:
Social Housing Breakdown
I will shortly be writing to all local authorities, including Meath, setting out their individual social housing targets for 2019 and progress against these targets will continue to be published each quarter.
In relation to the provision of affordable housing for purchase, Part 5 of the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2009 has been commenced, placing the scheme on a statutory footing. In order to support local authorities in delivering affordable homes, €310 million is being made available from 2019 until 2021 under the Serviced Site Fund (SSF). The SSF will fund facilitating infrastructure on local authority sites. At a maximum funding rate of €50,000 per affordable home, at least 6,200 affordable homes will be facilitated.
On foot of the first call for SSF proposals which issued to local authorities in Dublin, the Greater Dublin Area, Cork and Galway City, approval was issued in December 2018 for ten projects at a cost of €43m, which will support the delivery of some 1,400 affordable homes. Infrastructure works on these projects will begin as soon as possible and delivery of affordable homes is anticipated from early 2020 onwards. A second call for proposals will issue to local authorities shortly, taking account of the authorities' economic assessments of the requirement and potential to deliver affordable homes from their sites.
The Government is also committed to the introduction of a not-for-profit, cost rental sector in Ireland. Together with delivering more affordable and predictable rents, cost rental will make a sustainable impact on national competitiveness and the attractiveness of our main urban centres as places to live and work. There are currently two cost rental projects at Enniskerry Road in Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown and St. Michael’s Estate in Inchicore, which will deliver 50 and 330 cost rental homes respectively. The experience on these projects will inform a national cost rental framework under which similar projects will be rolled out on a wider scale. My Department is engaged with the National Development Finance Agency, the European Investment Bank and the Land Development Agency to develop the optimum funding and delivery mechanisms to support cost rental delivery at scale in Dublin and other urban areas.
My Department will continue to work with all local authorities with regard to any social and mixed-tenure housing proposals that they bring forward, in order to maximise delivery and also harness appropriate opportunities to deliver on additional housing units in 2019.