Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 30 September 2026
93. Deputy William Aird asked the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage the measures are being taken to ensure that the increased housing delivery committed to under Delivering Homes, Building Communities 2025–2030 is reaching areas experiencing the greatest pressure, including rural towns and commuter counties. [69187/26]
View answerThe Government published its housing action plan, Delivering Homes, Building Communities, on 13 November 2025. The implementation of the actions set out in the plan will see the delivery of 300,000 new homes over its lifetime, including 72,000 social homes and 90,000 affordable housing supports.
Pillar 1 of the new plan deals with activating housing supply by activating more land, providing more housing-related infrastructure, securing more development finance for home building, addressing viability challenges, particularly in apartment delivery, increasing the adoption of Modern Methods of Construction, improving labour skills in the residential construction sector, and working towards ending dereliction and vacancy.
The delivery of housing is at the centre of the updated National Development Plan, published in July 2025, with an unprecedented level of investment of €40.5bn provided for housing and related water services to 2030. Budget 2026 provided over €9 billion in capital funding through my Department, the Land Development Agency (LDA) and the Housing Finance Agency to finance the building of new social and affordable homes.
The revised National Planning Framework (NPF) was approved in April 2025 to help increase capacity and accelerate home building across the country, including rural towns and commuter counties. In July 2025, I issued Guidelines instructing local authorities to update housing targets in line with the revised NPF. These set out the need to plan for approximately 55,000 additional households per annum on average to 2040, enabling zoning for a total of 83,000 units per annum. As of September 2026, all local authorities have commenced a variation process to their Development Plans, with twenty-three of those either partially or fully completed.
On 30 June, Government agreed a proposed policy direction for rural housing with the publication of the Draft Sustainable Rural and Gaeltacht Housing National Planning Statement. The planned publication of the final National Planning Statement before the end of 2026, will mark the most significant update to rural housing policy since the introduction of the 2005 Sustainable Rural Housing Guidelines. Overall, the policy approach is to allow new rural housing for people who genuinely need to live in rural areas, while also preventing the uncontrolled spread of housing from nearby towns and cities into the countryside. It also aims to support the renewal of rural towns and villages and address population decline in rural areas.
I established the Housing Activation Office (HAO) in April 2025 to ensure a radical step change in housing supply. Since its establishment, the Office has engaged extensively both formally and informally with various stakeholders to identify and address infrastructure barriers to housing delivery. In June of this year, I announced that 82 infrastructure projects around the country will be supported in the first phase of the €1 billion Housing Infrastructure Investment Fund (HIIF) programme. The approved projects will directly unlock lands with the capacity to deliver 86,000 new homes and indirectly unlock lands for a potential further 113,000 homes.
In September, I announced the 120 projects across every local authority that will be included under the new Towns and Cities Regeneration Investment Fund programme, funding transformative town and city regeneration projects. An investment of €409 million will be available if local authorities can meet the targets set out in their applications for support.
Comprehensive reforms of the rental sector were introduced in March 2026, which are helping to stimulate increased development of apartments over the longer-term.
The Government's and my focus for the remainder of 2026 will continue to be on the implementation of the actions of Delivering Homes, Building Communities, and closely monitoring apartment investment, as well as planning, commencement and housing completion activity to inform ongoing policy consideration.
