427. Deputy Seán Ó Fearghaíl asked the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage the key measures taken to support right-sizing since January 2025; his priorities for same for the rest of 2026; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [53478/26]

Government is committed to increasing housing available to older people to facilitate ageing in place with dignity and independence and to supporting rightsizing on a voluntary basis. Delivering Homes, Building Communities, includes measures which will increase delivery of housing for older people through increased delivery of social housing, increased delivery of more suitable homes and choice in private housing and increased choice to support voluntary rightsizing.  Delivering Homes, Building Communities also includes a commitment to develop an action plan on delivering housing for older people and this plan is currently under preparation.

Delivering Homes, Building Communities will also increase choice for older people to voluntarily rightsize through advancing consideration of the availability of bridging finance to support rightsizing, a review of the operation of existing local authority financial contribution schemes and supporting social housing tenants who wish to rightsize to more suitable accommodation.

As part of the work being progressed, I am pleased to welcome the recent positive announcement by the Central Bank that it is amending the mortgage measures to exempt certain types of bridging loans from the Loan-to-Income (LTI) limit that applies to lending for principal home purposes. This will assist in supporting voluntary rightsizing where older people choose to purchase a new home prior to concluding the sale of their existing home.

Under Delivering Homes, Building Communities, each local authority will prepare a Housing Delivery Action Plan (HDAP) setting out their planned delivery of social and affordable housing to 2030 in line with their targets. In preparing their HDAP, each local authority will reflect local need to ensure the right mix of homes to respond to need and priorities, including housing for older people for whom targets for the period 2027-2030 will be agreed with each local authority.

My Department supports the delivery of housing for older people with funding available from a range of delivery programmes within my Department for both local authorities and Approved Housing Bodies (AHBs) to advance projects to provide for this category in line with the need identified within the local authorities Housing Delivery Action Plans. My Department’s Design Manual for Quality Housing, which is available on my Department’s website, provides guidance and designs for new public housing construction and has a number of designs to support the delivery of age-friendly housing.

The range of funding models supporting delivery of social housing includes the Social Housing Capital Investment Programme (SHCIP), Capital Advance Leasing Facility (CALF) and the Capital Assistance Scheme (CAS). Under the Capital Assistance Scheme up to 100% capital funding is provided to AHBs to provide new social homes for priority categories to include homeless, disability and housing for older people.