Fianna Fáil to propose €10bn affordable housing scheme

Plan to provide 50,000 homes over five-year term under FF government

Fianna Fáil is to propose a €10 billion affordable housing scheme for people who are paying more than a third of their income on rent or mortgage repayments.

The party will, in the next few days, launch its affordable housing policy, which will feed into its general election manifesto, ahead of a Dáil motion on the issue next week.

Darragh O'Brien, the party's housing spokesman, said it would provide 50,000 homes over a five-year term of a Fianna Fáil led government.

Mr O’Brien claimed this was substantially more than the 10,000 affordable homes the Government was committed to providing. Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin has repeatedly said housing will be one of the main battlegrounds of the next election.

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The Fianna Fáil scheme will use €2 billion a year, drawn from an “investment vehicle” that would raise funds off the Exchequer balance sheet, to build on State-owned lands.

It would also make greater use of Part V development, which compels private developers to allocate 10 per cent of lands for social and affordable housing. Fianna Fáil has also advocated increasing the Part V responsibility to 20 per cent.

Qualifying criteria

Mr O’Brien said councils would set the qualifying criteria for those eligible for the scheme by using information from the CSO on local income levels and data from the property price register.

The scheme will use as its defining criteria levels set down in the Planning and Development Act, 2000, which says people whose rent or mortgage payments exceed 35 per cent of their net annual income are eligible for housing assistance.

Mr O’Brien said councils and voluntary housing associations were currently restricted when building large housing estates.

“Rather than making the old mistakes of segregating communities, we need to achieve a broad range of household types and incomes,” he said. “A new affordable owner-occupier system will help to secure that aim.”

Mr O’Brien, a Dublin Fingal TD, said councils would be given “specific targets” of how many houses they should build.

The local authorities would also have discretion over the income limits that would apply to those applying for affordable housing. This would allow for the income thresholds for applicants to be altered in different areas to take account of “different circumstances in each area”.

Once money is drawn down, councils would then subcontract the building of the houses to private developers, Mr O’Brien added.

“They will then be sold to eligible ordinary income workers and the proceeds reinvested in building new units,” he said. “The scheme will target 50,000 units over a five-year term of government.”

A new housing delivery agency – already proposed by Fianna Fáil – will monitor the rate of construction of the homes and ensure that targets are being met.