428. Deputy Seán Ó Fearghaíl asked the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage the key measures taken to boost overall housing supply since January 2025; his priorities for same for the rest of 2026; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [53479/26]

Since taking office, the Government is fully focused on increasing the national housing stock and ensuring that a suitable range of housing is available to all.

The Government published a new housing action plan, Delivering Homes, Building Communities, on 13 November 2025. The implementation of the actions set out in the plan will see the delivery of 300,000 new homes over its lifetime, including 72,000 social homes and 90,000 affordable housing supports.

Pillar 1 of the new plan, which deals with activating housing supply, will see a range of actions implemented over the lifetime of the plan. These are aimed at activating more land, providing more housing-related infrastructure, securing more development finance for home building, addressing viability challenges, particularly in apartment delivery, increasing the adoption of Modern Methods of Construction, improving labour skills in the residential construction sector, and working towards ending dereliction and vacancy.

The delivery of housing is at the centre of the updated National Development Plan, published in July 2025, with an unprecedented level of investment of €40.5bn provided for housing and related water services to 2030.

Budget 2026 provided over €9 billion in capital funding through my Department, the Land Development Agency (LDA) and the Housing Finance Agency to finance the building of new social and affordable homes.

The revised National Planning Framework (NPF) was approved in April 2025 to help increase capacity and accelerate home building across the country. In July 2025, I issued Guidelines instructing local authorities to update housing targets in line with the revised NPF. The new Guidelines set out the need to plan for approximately 55,000 additional households per annum on average to 2040, enabling zoning for a total of 83,000 units per annum. All 31 local authorities have made or are making variations to their development plans to zone more land for housing.

Significant progress has been made on the implementation of the Planning and Development Act 2024. The first phase of commencements provided for the establishment of An Coimisiún Pleanála and introduced provisions for reformed planning judicial review. The Planning and Development (Amendment) Bill 2025 was enacted before the 2025 summer recess to deal with expiring planning permissions and to encourage activation of housing. In October and December 2025, further milestones were reached, with the full commencement of Part 3 of the Planning and Development Act 2024.

The Planning and Development (Amendment) Bill 2006, which will further support commencement of the the Planning and Development Act 2024, will finish all stages in the Oireachtas before the 2026 summer recess.

I established the Housing Activation Office (HAO) in April 2025 to ensure a radical step change in housing supply. Since its establishment, the Office has engaged extensively both formally and informally with various stakeholders to identify and address infrastructure barriers to housing delivery. In June of this year, I announced that 82 infrastructure projects will be supported in the first phase of the €1 billion Housing Infrastructure Investment Fund (HIIF) programme. The approved projects will directly unlock lands with the capacity to deliver 86,000 new homes and indirectly unlock lands for a potential further 113,000 homes.

Comprehensive reforms of the rental sector were introduced in March 2026, which are helping to stimulate increased development of apartments over the longer-term.

The Government's and my focus for the remainder of 2026 will continue to be on the implementation of the actions of Delivering Homes, Building Communities, and closely monitoring apartment investment, as well as planning, commencement and housing completion activity to inform ongoing policy consideration.

Further information on activating housing supply is available at the following link:

www.gov.ie/en/department-of-housing-local-government-and-heritage/publications/enabling-more-housing/#activating-supply

I have also just published a Mid Year Progress Report 2026 on the implementation of Delivering Homes, Building Communities 2025-2030: www.gov.ie/en/department-of-housing-local-government-and-heritage/publications/delivering-homes-building-communities-2025-2030-mid-year-progress-report/