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The Government this week launched published its housing and homelessness plan entitled ‘Rebuilding Ireland’. Although the plan is focused on homelessness and social housing there were also measures announced to address the under supply of housing which is one of key issues preventing first time buyers from acquiring a home.
Under the plan the Government has said it will establish a €200m ‘Local Infrastructure Housing Activation Fund’ to deliver up to 20,000 housing to units by 2020. It is proposed that the NTMA would provide some of the commercial funding required by developers in respect of larger development sites. The overall objective in terms of output is to double the number of units a constructed per year to 25,000 units (up from just 12,666 last year).
There is likely to be some form of financial incentive for first time buyers in the forthcoming budget which will most likely take the form of a backdated tax rebate.
It is widely acknowledged that bottlenecks in the planning process is leading to delays in the construction of building projects. It is proposed that large scale residential development planning applications would be fast tracked by An Bord Pleanala.
