Record capital funding of €6bn for housing in Budget 2025

Junior minister for nature, heritage and electoral reform Malcolm Noonan; Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien; and junior minister for local government & planning, Alan Dillon, at yesterday’s budget briefing. Picture: Sam Boal/Collins 

The Housing Minister has insisted the State ‘has the back’ of people who are saving to buy a home after announcing record capital funding of €6bn for housing in the budget.

Darragh O’Brien said the new budget would “continue the momentum that we have” in terms of housebuilding, which is currently progressing at pace, with close to 40,000 homes projected to be completed by the end of 2024.

Mr O’Brien said the extension to the end of 2029 of the Government’s help-to-buy scheme — which sees refunds of up to €30,000 on the purchase price of a new build delivered to first-time buyers — will provide “certainty and stability to home purchasers and indeed the development sector”.

Other measures included in the housing budget for 2025 include:

• A €2.7bn package for Uisce Éireann for the delivery of “necessary water infrastructure” to aid in housebuilding targets;
• An increase in the renters tax credit to €1,000 from €750;
• A €2bn capital investment in social housing;
• The extension of rental relief schemes, the Housing Assistance Payment and Rental Accommodation Scheme, to an additional 10,000 households;
• An additional €1.25bn allocated to the Land Development Agency and €1.65bn for the Housing Finance Agency.

The minister also said new housing targets under the National Development Plan, which had initially been slated for release last March, will now likely be published by the end of October.

He added that the Housing For All social housing target for 2025 will be a total of 12,365 homes.

Mr O’Brien said he expects the new Planning and Development Bill to finally pass both houses of the Dáil next week, after nearly two years of debate and revisions.

Asked whether he had any doubts as to whether or not the bill, which has been criticised for its 700-page length and the manner in which it has been repeatedly guillotined at committee stage, may cause more problems for the planning process it is meant to solve, the minister said: “I am confidence about this piece of legislation, but I’m absolutely certain that it is needed.”

He said the planning system as it currently stands has “too many gray areas” which the new bill will remedy.

In terms of the backlog of planning decisions at An Bord Pleanála, Minister of State for Planning Alan Dillon said €38m would be allocated to the body next year.

He said that €6m of this “would support sanctioning staffing levels of more than 300 people”, a figure the agency has been calling for nearly two years.