Addressing our housing shortage and homelessness crisis is the Government's number one priority. The Rebuilding Ireland Action Plan for Housing and Homelessness is focused on increasing and accelerating housing delivery, across all tenures. The funding earmarked for the social housing element of the Action Plan was increased from €5.35 billion to over €6 billion in Budget 2018.
With regard to rural housing, it is a matter for each local authority to determine the nature, location and relative priority of individual social housing projects. In submitting proposals for funding to my Department in respect of new social housing projects, local authorities and approved housing bodies may include proposals for single social houses in rural areas, where they have identified and prioritised such need.
Local authorities now have substantial pipelines of new social housing projects, ranging from larger scale developments to smaller scale projects, details of which have been published and are available at the following link: http://rebuildingireland.ie/news/social-housing-developments/. I am keen that they advance all of these as soon as possible and have assured them that funding is available to fully support their efforts in this regard.
In terms of the development of private sites for housing, the Local Infrastructure Housing Activation Fund (LIHAF), which is aimed at removing infrastructural blockages that were hindering development on otherwise suitable and strategically located sites will support significant development over the coming years. As the first round of LIHAF was oversubscribed, a second round of LIHAF was announced in Budget 2018, with €50 million being made available to unlock further sites for housing.
In relation to the development of rural areas, the Deputy will be aware that the Action Plan for Rural Development, published on 23 January 2017, by my colleague the Minister for Rural and Community Development, takes a whole-of-Government approach to the economic and social development of rural Ireland and will act as an overarching structure for the co-ordination and implementation of rural initiatives across Government Departments and other public bodies.
