TD questions FF claim of €100m allocation for affordable housing

Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin have clashed over how much new funding will be allocated to an affordable housing scheme to be announced in the budget.

Fianna Fáil has been pressing the Government for the new scheme which would allow affordable homes to be built on State-owned service land. There would be a subsidy available per home that would make it more affordable to households unable to get on the property ladder.

The scheme would cost €100 million per annum, according to sources familiar with the budgetary process.

However, Sinn Féin housing spokesman Eoin Ó Broin yesterday questioned whether the figure of €100 million was new spending. Referring to a parliamentary reply he received from Minister for Housing Eoghan Murphy, Mr Ó Broin said the Exchequer had already applied €75 million this year to such a scheme.

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Already announced

He suggested the Fianna Fáil initiative had already been announced and that only €25 million, not €100 million, had been made available.

The reply stated that €75 million of Exchequer funding was being provided under the Serviced Sites Fund to provide enabling infrastructure to facilitate the delivery of affordable homes on local authority and Housing Agency sites.

“Nine local authorities have submitted a total of 15 proposals under this first call, and these are currently being assessed in my department. We are working toward completing the assessments and awarding funding next month,” stated Mr Murphy in his reply.

Mr Ó Broin said on Twitter: “This scheme already exists. It’s called the Serviced Sites Fund and has an allocation of €75 million this year, so far unspent and due to be rolled over to 2019. So the Fianna Fáil ask is for an extra €25 million a year! So much for a housing budget.”

In response, Fianna Fáil finance spokesman Michael McGrath said that Mr Ó Broin was "not joining the dots properly" on a measure that he had yet to see. He suggested that what the Sinn Féin TD was referring to was different to what would be announced. He said Mr Ó Broin should "keep his powder dry" until the budget was announced and the full details of the initiative were revealed.