ACCORDING to the Minister for Housing, James Browne, €436 million will be set aside for social housing needs this year. The figure includes capital funding allocations of €325m which will be used by local authorities for the second-hand social housing acquisitions programme.
On top of this, €111m will be allocated to 82 new social housing projects. The hope is that this will provide 1,300 newly built homes, delivered over a period of two years between 2025 and 2027.
575 of these new builds will be delivered this year, with the rest to follow in 2026 and 2027. These include: 542 new homes in Dublin; 234 in Cork; 60 in Westmeath; 58 in Meath; 59 in Limerick; 56 in Kerry; 55 in Wicklow; 30 in Kilkenny; as well as 231 homes across thirteen other counties.
Minister Browne said that the new builds would be ‘key to addressing the housing challenge, and in particular preventing and ultimately eliminating long-term homelessness.’
This second-hand acquisitions programme for 2025 will focus on Tenant-in-Situ Acquisitions; Older people and people with a disabilities; Exits from homeless services; and Buy and Renew acquisitions. Mr Browne said the Government has funded the acquisition of 7,000 social homes since 2020, at a cost of around €2bn.
The minister elaborated that he wanted to maximise the delivery of homes through ‘supply, supply, supply’.
He said: “I don’t get into predictions. I don’t get into estimates. What matters is the real numbers. And my aim is to deliver, maximise the delivery of homes in this country, whether that be social, affordable or private.
“We want to get homelessness under control. We want to get it reduced and we want to get it eliminated. The only way to do that is to maximise supply.”
Sinn Féin’s housing spokesperson Eoin Ó Broin responded to Mr Browne that he should ‘come clean on social and affordable housing funding’. The Dublin Mid-West TD has claimed that the government’s allocation for social and affordable housing in 2025 is €104m less than in 2024.
Mr Ó Broin said: “In 2024 the total exchequer expenditure on the delivery of social and affordable homes under the five funding headings was €2,818 billion. The allocation for 2025 as set out by the Department of Finance last December across these schemes was €2.277bn, €540m less than in 2024.
“While the Government will try and dress today’s announcement up as an increase in funding for social and affordable housing, what it actually confirms is that the level of funding that has been cut for this year compared to last year, assuming that all of the €436m is additional to the allocations announced in the 2025 Revised Estimates.
“At a time when private sector investment in housing appears to be cooling, Government should be increasing its levels of investment into social and affordable housing ensuring much needed homes would be delivered.”
See More: Department For Housing, Eoin Ó Broin, James Browne
