Housing for All, is the Government’s plan to increase the supply of housing to an average of 33,000 per year over the next decade. This includes the delivery of 90,000 social homes and 54,000 affordable homes by 2030. Housing for All is supported by an investment package of over €4bn per annum, through an overall combination of €12bn in direct Exchequer funding, €3.5bn in funding through the Land Development Agency and €5bn funding through the Housing Finance Agency.
Housing for All contains a number of measures to support the capacity of local authorities to deliver housing projects. Extensive work was undertaken in 2021 to identify the additional staff resources required by local authorities to deliver the social housing targets set out in Housing for All. In this regard, I have approved an additional 250 staff specifically to support the delivery of social housing.
In October 2022, I also approved funding for an initial tranche of 69 affordable housing staff posts for local authorities with an affordability constraint. As the affordable housing delivery pipeline in local authorities increases, further engagement with Department of Public Expenditure NDP Delivery and Reform for sanction for the remaining posts required will be undertaken.
Under Section 159 of the Local Government Act 2001, each Chief Executive is responsible for the staffing and organisational arrangements necessary for carrying out the functions of the local authority for which he/she is responsible. My Department oversees workforce planning for the local government sector, including the monitoring of local government sector employment levels. To this end, my Department gathers aggregate quarterly data on staff numbers in each local authority on a whole time equivalent basis. However, granular data, in terms of the detailed breakdown of the numbers and grades of staff allocated to specific work areas within local authorities is not collected and consequently is not available in my Department. This information would be available from each local authority.
