Pauline Tully
Question:864. Deputy Pauline Tully asked the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage to detail the allocation of the Affordable Housing Fund (AHF) to each county to date, in tabular form. [37736/23]
View answerMonday, 11 September 2023
Questions (864)
Written answers
The Affordable Housing Fund (AHF) is in place to support local authorities to deliver affordable purchase and cost rental homes for eligible approved housing applicants in line with the ambitious targets set out under the Government's Housing For All strategic plan and the provisions of the Affordable Housing Act 2021. The AHF does not fund affordable housing delivery by Approved Housing Bodies, the Land Development Agency, First Homes, or a range of other affordability measures which are addressed separately.
Specific AHF funding allocations have not been made to individual local authorities. Applications to the fund by local authorities are assessed against a range of criteria to determine suitability for inclusion in the programme. To date, approvals under the Fund have been given for a number of affordable housing schemes for delivery across 20 local authorities that will assist with the delivery of over 4,000 homes for purchase or rent between 2022 and 2027 at a total approved subsidy cost of approximately €350m. This includes a number of projects approved under the earlier Serviced Sites Fund which has been absorbed into the AHF.
Following the publication of Housing for All in September 2021, I asked all local authorities to prepare Housing Delivery Action Plans. Each local authority was asked to assess the level of housing demand with affordability constraint projected for their area based on the Housing Need and Demand Assessment Tool and plan their provision accordingly. A copy of each Council’s Housing Delivery Action Plan is available on their individual websites. 18 local authorities with the highest levels of affordable housing need were set five-year Affordable Delivery Targets.
Each of these local authorities - namely Carlow, Cork City, Cork County, Dublin City, Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown, Fingal, Galway City, Galway County, Kildare, Kilkenny, Limerick, Laois, Louth, Meath, South Dublin, Waterford, Wicklow, and Westmeath - is actively developing and expanding its affordability programme for its area.
It is open to all local authorities to apply for funding under the AHF towards the development costs of an affordability scheme developed in response to an identified housing affordability need in their area. Two further local authorities - Mayo and Wexford - have successfully brought forward applications for AHF funding that have been included in the above figures.
Further assistance with developing schemes is available from my Department, The Housing Agency and the Housing Delivery Co-ordination Office within the Local Government Management Association.