Under the Housing for All strategy, the Government’s plans to increase the supply of housing to an average of 33,000 per year over the next decade. The strategy is backed by historic levels of investment with in excess of €20bn through the Exchequer, the Land Development Agency and the Housing Finance Agency over the next 5 years. The unprecedented levels of funding to support housing delivery will provide the sector with the stability and certainty needed to increase overall housing supply.
The Housing for All strategy prioritises an increase in social and affordable homes committing to delivery of 90,000 social homes, 36,000 affordable purchase homes and 18,000 cost rental homes by 2030. The national targets for social and affordable homes for 2022 to 2025 is as follows:
|
2022
|
2023
|
2024
|
2025
|
Social
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9,000
|
9,100
|
9,300
|
10,000
|
Affordable
|
4,100
|
5,500
|
6,400
|
6,400
|
The Government will use all the channels at its disposal to increase the delivery of social and affordable housing. In the case of affordable housing, this includes the programmes and funding streams under the Affordable Housing Fund, Cost Rental Equity Loan, Project Tosaigh and Croi Connaithe.
Under Housing for All, processes have been put in place to co-ordinate interventions and share information to ensure successful implementation, increased overall supply, complementarity, value for money for the Exchequer and securing optimum affordability for affordable housing purchasers and renters.
At a local level each local authority is currently preparing a Housing Delivery Action Plan and will engage with approved housing bodies and the Land Development Agency in this regard. These plans, which will be in line with the national Housing for All targets, will inform the level of social and affordable houses to be delivered for each area and the most appropriate delivery streams. At a national level, my Department has recently established the High Level Affordable Housing Delivery Group to draw together the key stakeholders responsible for delivering social and affordable homes. This group is co-ordinating interventions and will monitor progress of Housing for All affordable housing programmes and targets.
Supported by this Government strategy, indications of increased construction activity are becoming evident. The latest CSO New Dwellings Completion Report shows the number of new homes becoming available for use in the year up to September was 24,156, a 7% increase when compared to the year to Q3 2020 (22,585). Additionally, the latest CSO data reports that 30,519 residential units were commenced in the year to September 2021, up 40% year-on-year, when compared to the same period to September 2020. The number of homes for which Commencement Notices were provided in September 2021 (3,203) was up 48% on August’s figure. Furthermore, 11,150 units were granted planning permission in Q2 2021, a 16.6% increase compared with pre-pandemic levels in Q2 2019 (9,566).