Update 9.42am: The Irish Council for Social Housing has called on the Government to ensure housing associations can access sites and private finance to meet social housing delivery targets.
Speaking at the ICSH’s housing finance conference in Kilkenny today, CEO Dr Donal McManus said: “Under the Government’s Action Plan for Housing, our sector is tasked with delivering 15,000 homes over the next five years.
“This will entail an investment of up to €2bn by housing associations.
“We have repeatedly called for State lands to be released to housing associations immediately.
“Access to land has to occur in the first year of the five-year period set out for the Government’s Action Plan.
“Identifying and assembling sites, going through the planning process, and commencing development can take two to three years. So if land is not made available now, the targets in the plan will not be met.
“A new ‘mixed funding’ model will be used to finance the €2bn investment by housing associations.
“They will use funding received from the State to leverage in additional finance from the private sector.
“For every €30m of state funding an additional €70m will be raised independently by housing associations thus stretching the overall investment in social housing.
“In effect, this allows us to provide three times more homes than if we were wholly dependent on public capital funding.”
Earlier:
Over 15,000 homes need to be delivered over the next five years by housing associations.
The Irish Council for Social Housing is holding a housing finance conference today to look at ways to achieve social housing targets set out under the Government’s Action Plan for Housing.
During the conference, the ICSH will highlight the need for increased access to land and working with private-sector partners to meet the government’s target of 47,000 additional homes.
CEO Donal McManus, outlines some of the areas the conference will be looking at.
“In terms of the Government’s own target of 47,000 additional … homes for local authorities and housing associations like our own sector, one of the key things we’d be looking for is for more state land for social housing, which was very strong 10, 15 years ago,” he said.
“But if we want to plan for the next six years, we need sites identified, assembled, with planning, ready to go, so housing associations and local authorities can utilise over the next number of years for the delivery of social houses.”
