Local authorities are to spend €226 million on major infrastructure projects to make privately-owed sites ready for large housing developments.
The Government’s Local Infrastructure Housing Activation Fund has been allocated to 15 city and county councils to provide large road, water and sewerage schemes to service lands zoned for housing that have remained undeveloped.
Half the money, €113 million, will be spent in Dublin, with substantial sums also allocated to the commuter counties of Meath, Louth and Kildare. Cork city and county will see €46 million in infrastructure spending.
Minister for Housing Simon Coveney said 23,000 homes would be delivered on the newly-serviced sites over the next three years.
Just over 15,000 houses were built State-wide last year, with some commentators claiming this figure is widely overestimated.
“I am confident this can deliver 23,000 housing units. I would be hopeful that by the time we get to 2021 we will be well above the 25,000 housing units a year figure that we have set as a target – I think we may well be up to 30,000 or more by then,” Mr Coveney said.
“We are coming from a place of under-delivery that has resulted in a big supply deficit, but we are ramping up at a pace I think is manageable and sustainable and is also going to deliver a lot more houses.”
Schemes rejected
Funding proposals were submitted by 21 city and county councils, but six had their schemes rejected, with no funding allocated to Galway city or county, Donegal, Mayo, Offaly and Wexford, while 10 local authorities, mostly in the northwest, made no applications for funding.
The money, which is 75 per cent exchequer-funded and 25 per cent from the local authorities, was only available for projects which had the capacity to “deliver houses at considerable scale”, Mr Coveney said. In Dublin the land “unblocked” by the new infrastructure must yield a minimum of 500 homes; outside the capital the threshold is 200 homes.
Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council will receive the largest tranche of funding, with €40 million for projects at Cherrywood, Stepaside, Kilternan and Shanganagh. The funding is expected to deliver 5,000 houses by 2021, and up to 14,800 in the long term.
New suburb
The project attracting the largest amount of money is the development of
Adamstown
, with South Dublin County Council having an allocation of €20 million, which will mostly be spent on roads to service new housing estates of 1,000 homes by 2021. Fewer than 1,600 of more than 9,000 homes planned for the new suburb have so far been built .
Other projects in South Dublin have been allocated €7 million.
Fingal County Council has an allocation of €26.58 million for projects at Baldoyle, Donabate and Oldtown, which are expected to yield 2,800 homes in three years.
Dublin City Council has an allocation of €18.75 million, with €15.75 million to be spent on a bridge linking the south docks to the Poolbeg peninsula where 1,500 homes are due to be built by 2021.
Local authorities are expected to build the infrastructure from 2017 to 2019.
