I propose to take Questions Nos. 611, 612 and 618 together.
Housing affordability for individual households is a unique function of, inter alia, income, prevailing market prices and rents in different locations, as well as access to funding and finance. While there is no universally ideal price/rent-to-income ratio or minimum residual income requirement, there is broad agreement that households, particularly low- to moderate- income households, should be spending no more than one third of their net income on housing costs over the longer term.
The development of the State land bank for housing is a key Government objective and to this end, the Rebuilding Ireland Housing Land Map was published on 27 April 2017 and is available at http://rebuildingireland.ie/news/rebuilding-ireland-land-map/. Local authorities and the Housing Agency are now finalising Development Management Plans for their sites.
The final development model for each site, including the tenure mix, will be the subject of careful consideration by the local authority concerned, including its elected members. The development of many sites for social and affordable housing is already underway. For example, the Dublin local authorities are well advanced in bringing large-scale sites forward for mixed-tenure housing, with projects advancing that can deliver around 3,000 mixed-tenure homes in the Dublin City Council and South Dublin County Council areas alone and other sites planned.
Funding for 34 projects under the Local Infrastructure Housing Activation Fund (LIHAF), at a cost of €226 million, will be key to the delivery of more than 20,000 new homes over the next four years. There will be homes available at below €320,000 on 70% of the sites being opened up through this enabling infrastructure. South Dublin County Council has approval for three projects at Adamstown, Kilcarbery, and Clonburris, respectively. The total cost of these projects is €27.4 million, of which €20.5 million will be funded by my Department, and €6.9 million by South Dublin County Council. These projects are expected to facilitate the delivery of 3,000 homes by 2021 and have the potential to support 11,500 housing units in the longer term, once the sites are fully built out.
As I have previously signalled, the Government recognises the housing affordability pressures faced by many households, particularly in certain parts of the country, and as such housing affordability has been examined across a range of interconnected policy areas in the context of the ongoing focused review of Rebuilding Ireland. A number of new and enhanced actions in this area have already been announced and I expect to make further announcements in the coming weeks as this work is finalised.
New measures introduced to date, to enable the provision of affordable homes, to buy or rent, include:
- Planning reforms, such as the fast-track planning approval process for developments of scale with over 4,000 homes worth of applications submitted to An Bord Pleanála;
- Reduced and reformed development contributions;
- Rent caps in specific Rent Pressure Zones; and
- Amendments to apartment planning guidelines to allow for more cost-effective and affordable apartment development for our city centres.
On 10 October, as part of Budget 2018, I announced an additional €75 million in Exchequer funding for new affordable housing initiatives.
Firstly, there will be a second LIHAF fund of €50 million to unlock even more sites, more quickly, and at affordable prices. Secondly, I’m introducing a new fund of €25 million, to be provided over 2018 and 2019, aimed at unlocking local authority-owned land specifically in order to deliver affordable housing on those sites. My Department is currently drawing up the criteria for access to this scheme, to be announced in the coming weeks, along with further affordability measures.
In terms of residential land more broadly, the combination of the capital gains change and the more than doubling of the vacant site levy to 7%, as signalled in Budget 2018, will help to address the issue of land hoarding and to release more land for residential development.
