The Government's new Housing Plan, Delivering Homes, Building Communities aims to deliver 300,000 new homes in the period to 2030, including 72,000 social homes. The Plan seeks to significantly scale-up delivery of new build social homes over the coming years, increasing from an average of 8,000 or so homes a year at present to an average of 12,000 per year.
To support this uplift in delivery, the updated National Development Plan has committed record levels of funding for new social and affordable housing, totalling almost €20 billion. In Budget 2026, the total Exchequer funding being made available for the delivery of housing programmes is €7.21bn, comprising €5.19bn in Capital Funding and €2.021bn in Current Funding. The Exchequer Capital provision of €5.19bn will be supplemented by Land Development Agency (LDA) investment (projected up to €1.6bn) and Housing Finance Agency (HFA) lending (projected over €2bn), resulting in an overall capital provision of over €9bn.
This continued record level of funding demonstrates Governments commitment to increasing social and affordable housing delivery and a key focus of the social housing programme is to increase the number of new-build homes.
To incentivise local authorities to deliver more ‘own build’ projects, a new performance fund will be established. Where a local authority exceeds their ‘own build’ target they will receive additional discretionary funding for the delivery of community and placemaking initiatives and projects. In addition, ring-fenced 'new-build' housing delivery teams in each local authority dedicated to own build new social and affordable housing delivery will be fully funded by my Department through reimbursement to local authorities on a performance pay basis.
Delivering Homes, Building Communities will further support additional social housing delivery by mandating the use of standard house layouts and specifications as part of the new approval process and facilitate the use of Modern Methods of Construction (MMC) through a standardised design approach. To further promote the delivery of social housing I will embed the use of a Design and Build contract approach in all local authorities and the AHB sector in order to expedite the delivery of social housing.
Additionally, the new ‘single approval’ process for all new build social housing projects up to a value of €200m will support local authorities to streamline processes and encourage delivery of larger new build social housing developments.
Furthermore, the Land Acquisition Fund will be reformed, streamlined and expanded to ensure it is fit for purpose and can support the level of ambition in the Plan. To this end, the fund will also be increased from the current €239m to at least €500m.
The newly established Housing Activation Office (HAO) will identify and seek to address barriers to the delivery of public infrastructure projects required to enable housing development, through the alignment of funding; and co-ordination of infrastructure providers.
In addition to these measures, Government will establish a revamped contractor-led renewal programme focused on tackling dereliction and vacancy.
The second-hand acquisitions programme supports priority categories of need, including exits from homeless services, tenancy sustainment (tenant in situ), people with a disability and older persons requiring urgent housing responses. €50 million of funding was ring fenced to target acquisitions that support households, primarily larger families with children, to exit long-term emergency accommodation arrangements. The 2026 programme will maintain support for priority categories.
My Department publishes comprehensive programme-level statistics on a quarterly basis on social and affordable housing delivery activity by local authorities and Approved Housing Bodies (AHBs) in each local authority. This data is available to the end of Q3 2025 and is published on the statistics page of my Department’s website (www.gov.ie/en/collection/6060e-overall-social-housing-provision/).
The latest Construction Status Report shows that the social housing pipeline is strong and continues to grow with 13,064 social homes onsite at the end of Q3 2025, with an additional 12,784 homes at design and tender stage – a cumulative total of 25,848 social homes at the design and construction stages. In total, the Construction Status Report provides details on 49,273 new-build social homes across 3,007 schemes. All CSRs are available at the following link: www.gov.ie/en/collection/cb885-social-housing-construction-projects-status-reports/
