Social housing targets 'being realised'

The social and affordable housing targets, as set out in Part V of the Planning and Development Act 2000, were beginning to be realised, Minister of State for Housing Noel Ahern said yesterday.

Publishing his department's quarterly housing statistics, he said that almost 100,000 housing units were completed last year, of which 3,216 were provided under various housing schemes and almost 2,700 were "social and affordable".

However, he conceded that the target of 20 per cent of all new developments being social and affordable was never going to be realised. "It is never going to be 20 per cent and it was never meant to be," he said. Under Part V of the Planning and Development Act, local authorities were obliged to identify "up to 20 per cent" of land zoned for residential building and reserve this for social and affordable housing needs in the catchment area.

Mr Ahern said that this only applied to developments of five or more units. For instance, of the almost 93,500 units completed last year, some 27,000 were one-off dwellings, which the legislation would not apply to. Of the 93,419 dwellings completed nationally in 2006, 19,470 were in Dublin and 29,987 in the greater Dublin area. In the first three months of this year, 20,018 units had been completed.

"The housing market is still producing very significant levels of output, but I would expect some levelling off in the numbers being delivered from now on. The estimated housing demand during the period of the Government's new housing policy statement, Delivering Homes, Sustaining Communities, is for some 600,000 new homes by 2015."

Mr Ahern said that the Government aimed to provide up to 100,000 units of social and affordable housing under the National Development Plan, which runs to 2013, and €18 billion was being provided to meet this target.

"I am confident that the Part V mechanism is working well. We are now seeing the fruits from the Part V legislation, with a 60 per cent increase in the numbers delivered in 2005."

Exchequer allocations for housing for 2007 had totalled €1.2 billion, he said. "It is the highest ever allocation for the main local authority housing construction and acquisition programme. Total funding is almost €1.2 billion when one includes the improvement works programme and central heating for every local authority dwelling by the end of next year."