I thank the Deputy. Addressing homelessness and in particular homeless families and children is a priority for me, the Department and the Government. Ireland signed the Lisbon declaration in June 2021 which committed all signatories to work towards ending homelessness by 2030. I will continue to work with the National Homeless Action Committee to ensure an all-of-government approach to drive the ambition of the Lisbon declaration. Critical to supporting households to exit homelessness is our continued investment in the social housing programme. Budget 2026 has continued the record level of investment in social housing with €2.9 billion in capital allocated to support the delivery of social homes by local authorities. This continued investment in the social housing programme will increase the supply of stock available to allocate to households on social housing waiting lists, including households in emergency accommodation. It is important that local authorities ensure sufficient allocations are made to families in emergency accommodation. A key focus for me is to reduce the time families spend in emergency accommodation as well as prevention. In September I wrote to 21 local authorities with families in emergency accommodation for more than 12 months and asked them to use all housing schemes to exit these families from emergency accommodation. I ring-fenced an additional €50 million which I secured as part of the national development plan process to exit households who are the longest in homeless accommodation with a focus in the first instance on larger families with children and housing first clients. This funding is in addition to the €325 million already committed to the social housing second-hand acquisitions programme in 2025, bringing the second-hand acquisition programme in total to €375 million so far this year. Ensuring that families and children experiencing homelessness are provided with accommodation and supports is critical. Budget 2026 provides an allocation of €513.5 million to provide homeless emergency accommodation and supports. Capital funding of €50 million has been allocated to support the provision and maintenance of quality emergency and transitional accommodation. The new housing plan will be published shortly. It will include robust and targeted actions that will increase the provision of housing.
Sentiment score: 0.15
With our new housing plan, we are developing the homelessness prevention framework. Significant work has been ongoing in relation to that, working with all the NGOs. I acknowledge the good work by Focus Ireland and the Simon Communities of Ireland. When I became Minister for housing, the first thing I did was visit all of the homeless organisations at their sites to get the necessary information. They have been front and centre of everything I have been doing for the past eight months, including meeting on a regular basis through the National Homeless Action Committee, working together to ensure homelessness is reduced. My focus is absolutely on reducing that homeless number. It will be done through a number of different measures, including delivering on social housing, but also for those who are entering into homelessness, preventions, exits out as quickly as possible and working with people in emergency accommodation. I have outlined some of what we are in the middle of doing. Our homeless prevention framework, worked out with our NGOs, will also be published very soon.
Sentiment score: 0.07
As the Deputy rightly points out, there is significant additional funding for homelessness in yesterday’s budget. As the Deputy knows, budgets are always broad strokes. You are dealing with multiple Departments and within those Departments there are multiple areas. I will, through the Revised Estimates Volume, work out exactly how we will allocate this funding and how we will use it. In particular, the homeless prevention framework will be absolutely key to preventing people going into homelessness. We cannot address homelessness as a homogenous group. People are becoming homeless for different reasons. The most common and most frequent reason is notices to quit. That is why we are introducing the reforms in the rental sector to give renters security of tenure, which is critical to bringing us in line with the rest of Europe, but there are also other measures to increase delivery on social housing by as much as possible and as quickly as possible. As that will not end homelessness immediately, we will also have funding for those who are in homelessness, along with prevention and exit measures. This is a multifaceted approach to address homelessness.
Sentiment score: 0.05
The Land Development Agency is a key part of the Government’s housing strategy in delivering affordable homes for rent and sale in communities right across Ireland. The Department of Finance’s report on the sustainable funding options for the Land Development Agency considered the financing needs of the LDA and the implications of this need on the business model and operational activities of the agency. This report and the pressing need for further expansion in housing supply of all tenure types have informed the Government’s decision in June to expand the role and remit of the LDA. The annual report of the LDA for 2024, for example, which will be laid before the House this week, shows that the Government invested a further €325 million from the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund in 2024. The LDA invested €535 million in 2024 which, combined with existing assets, means the LDA holds €600 million in cost-rental assets now and €305 million in assets under construction at the end of 2024. The Government has committed to empower the LDA to widen its operational model to allow it to increase its level of capital recycling thorough the disposal of more units through affordable purchase schemes and, where appropriate to local housing demand, private sales. The LDA will also seek to further develop its land assembly function to ensure a healthy pipeline of serviced sites with a potential for further capital recovery where appropriate. This expansion to the role and remit of the LDA will leverage its existing expertise and skills to accelerate the delivery of housing in vibrant, sustainable communities all over Ireland and support the LDA reaching the mature stage of its lifecycle as a major developer and provider of affordable housing. The LDA entered into spending commitments of €824 million in 2024 which will deliver around 1,750 homes and has major projects for direct delivery at various stages of planning and development which will deliver over 10,000 homes by 2029. In addition to changes to the LDA’s operating model, officials from my Department are currently liaising with the Department of Finance on the treatment of the LDA’s cost-rental activity with respect to corporation tax. This has the potential to further support the sustainability of the LDA.
Sentiment score: 0.35
That is exactly what the Department of Finance did, working with the Department of housing. It looked at how the LDA is financed and how it can be financed into the future and examining the remit of the LDA. We have agreed to expand its role. The LDA will be absolutely critical. It will very soon be the largest housing delivery body in this country. We are fully committed to expanding its role and using financing to ensure that happens. In its gearing up it was very reliant on what are often referred to as turnkeys but we have to be aware that very much refers to off-plan properties that otherwise would not have been built. It was not a case of going in and buying properties that had been built where keys were ready to be handed over. The LDA is now moving more towards direct delivery and that is really important. We want to get to a situation where all delivery, whether it is affordable housing bodies, the LDA or local authorities, is being done in a plan-led manner. In the circumstances of the last few years there has been an emphasis on that partnership model but we very much want to get to a situation where all this is clearly plan-led by all bodies. That will maximise the delivery of homes so that the private market is there and available for people in the private sector.
Sentiment score: 0.19
I have been heavily engaged with the LDA. I meet it regularly. It is anxious to have that direct delivery model, which is what it has been moving towards as quickly as possible. The key is that we get properties delivered. As I say, I much prefer the direct delivery model and to get the private market delivering on the private sector side of things. That is where we are heading and where much of my wider decision-making of the last few months have been driving towards. We will provide the LDA with the funding it needs to deliver the properties we want it to deliver right across the country. I am very confident that we will get there in terms of our housing delivery model and we will do so over the coming years. Under the national development plan, nearly one in every three euro over the next five years will be into housing or into water to facilitate housing delivery. That shows the commitment from the Government to deliver. The LDA is an absolutely crucial part of that, as are local authorities. A lot of our local authorities are really delivering on social housing. Some are not and we need everyone to step up to the mark.
Sentiment score: 0.09
I thank the Deputy for his question. I confirm that there are no approval lags for CREL funding. There is an approval process for funding applications to ensure compliance with the scheme conditions and value for money for the Exchequer. This is, as it should be, a requirement under public financial procedures. A necessary process should not be misrepresented as a delay. Since July last year, the average time taken from the date the final report was submitted to the Department to the date of approval is 48 working days. In this regard, my Department has already approved more than 41 affordable housing body, AHB, projects this year, which will deliver more than 3,000 units up to 2029, while more than €400 million in CREL funding has been provided to AHBs to date in 2025. This ongoing and continued resourcing underpins the Government's commitment to the sector and I am satisfied that the approval process and support for AHBs under CREL is robust. While my Department makes every effort to process CREL and CALF applications as quickly as possible, the size, scale, complexity and specifications of each application is significant and the assessment time required to ensure projects are viable and represent value for money can vary. In addition, where an application is for funding under both CREL and CALF, it is often the case that the applications for the two schemes are not submitted by AHBs at the same time. In such instances, clarification is sought from the relevant AHB to establish whether a project can proceed independently. Where individual progress is impossible, turnaround times can be affected. My Department encourages AHBs and local authorities to seek funding for such projects simultaneously and will take further steps, as required, to ensure this happens going forward.
Sentiment score: 0.32
I reject the premise that there have been delays. For example, 54 CREL projects have been approved since the beginning of July last year and the average number of working days was 48 for this period. The processing times for individual applications can vary for the reasons I have outlined. That said, the trend is that projects are taking less and less time to assess. For example, projects submitted from July to December 2024 took 93 working days on average, whereas projects submitted from January to July 2025 - in my time - took 15 days on average. However, it is important to note that the standard deviation is high. Each project is assessed on an individual basis so the time it takes to assess one project does not in any indicate the time taken for another project. The longest time an application was on hand with the Department before receiving approval was 200 working days, while the shortest was a single working day. That can come down to a number of different reasons. We process these as quickly as possible but it can come down to the nature of the application. We have to do value for money, look at the specifications and, at times, seek further information in relation to various applications.
Sentiment score: 0.13
We are not in that situation at the moment. As I said, we are processing these ever more quickly. As I said, it took 15 days, on average, in the first six months of this year to process these applications. I encourage applications. There is an issue there, as the Deputy rightly pointed out, in terms of CALF and CREL not being aligned. It is something that the Department with AHBs and local authorities have to work on to see how we can get them better aligned. I admit that it is a frustration for me when I sign off on a cost-rental and then I see we have to wait to get the CALF because it is on a different track. That is because the applications are coming in differently. It is something that I, with the Department, AHBs and local authorities, can get an awful lot better. I am going to work on doing that.
Sentiment score: 0.06
On 10 June 2025, the Government approved stronger tenancy protections and greater certainty for the rental sector, including the introduction of a national rent control. From 1 March 2026, a national rent control will be introduced for all tenancies, which will limit rent increases for properties other than new build apartments to inflation at CPI up to a maximum of 2% and for new build apartments rent increases will be capped at the level of inflation, aimed at supporting investment in the construction of new apartments. As an interim measure, the Residential Tenancies (Amendment) Act 2025 was signed into law on 19 June 2025. The Act came into operation on 20 June 2025 to immediately extend and expand the operation of rent pressure zones to cover the entire country until 28 February 2026. This ensured that all tenancies nationally were protected from rent increases exceeding 2%, pending the introduction of a national rent control in 2026. The Government is also committed to providing more affordable rental properties through the delivery of cost rental projects and all funded cost rental projects most achieve cost covering rents that are at least 25% below comparable local market levels. Nearly 4,000 cost rental homes have been delivered by AHBs, local authorities and the LDA since the launch of Housing for All and a strong pipeline is in place. The Residential Tenancies Board, RTB, was established as a quasi-judicial independent statutory body under the residential tenancies Acts to facilitate the resolution of residential tenancy disputes and operate a national tenancy registration system. Additional resources will be allocated to the RTB to ensure the effective regulation of the sector. To this end, I am very pleased to announce that in 2026 the Exchequer funding allocation for the RTB will be increased by over 70%, to €22.8 million.
Sentiment score: 0.38
The changes will apply prospectively. That was made clear yesterday. In terms of the savings-----
Sentiment score: 0.13
Prospectively.
Sentiment score: 0.00
They will apply to new tenancies where designated as cost rental. The LDA sought this change so that it could deliver lower rents for people and that is why we agreed to it. As it is a cost rental measure, I fully expect, even through the metrics of the system, that it will result in lower rents for future tenancies.
Sentiment score: -0.11
All of the details around the various tax breaks, which Minister Donohoe worked on with the Department of housing to ensure we can increase the viability of apartments and get them and housing in general delivered, will be worked out over the coming weeks and then announced. The purpose of the tax cuts is to bring about that viability so that we can get apartments that people need built. Off plan, there are over 40,000 apartments in Dublin that are ready to go but are not being built because they are not viable. The LDA was created to ensure that the cost rental model was there for people to able to benefit from it. The LDA will continue to ensure that this is the case.
Sentiment score: 0.33