€1bn infrastructure fund to speed up house building approved

By Bairbre Holmes, Press Association

Cabinet ministers have signed off on a €1 billion infrastructure fund which aims to accelerate house building.

Speaking to reporters on Thursday morning, James Browne said the scheme is designed to provide funding for “shovel-ready projects” in order to “activate” sites around the country which have planning permission for housing.

The Minister for Housing added: “We expect to see shovels in the ground very very quickly.”

Under the scheme, applicants will apply for grants to fund infrastructure and utilities which will allow construction to start on more housing developments.

A Housing Activation Office was established by Mr Brown last year with the aim of addressing barriers to the delivery of the public infrastructure.

Speaking to reporters at Government Buildings on Tuesday he said it was now “up and running” and has been engaging with local authorities “right around the country” about multiple “sites, roads and ESB issues”.

He said potential projects have been “well identified” and he expects the application process to be “quite short, quite sharp, they should be ready to go”.

Speaking on RTÉ’s News At One Minister for Public Expenditure Jack Chambers said the project is expected to deliver “in the next two to three years”.

Applicants will need to pitch for grants and he said the “competitive edge” of the process will incentivise local authorities to deliver infrastructure more quickly.

The scheme is “about incentivising local authorities to prioritise infrastructure”, Mr Chambers said.

Asked if local authorities should already have been doing that Mr Chambers said “many of them do” and the fund was designed to “compliment” the direct funding they already put into infrastructure delivery.