Budget 'will provide clarity' in rental market, insists Martin
MEP Billy Kelleher; Tánaiste Micheál Martin and Finance Minister Michael McGrath at the sod-turning ceremony in Ballyvolane, Cork. Picture: Larry Cummins
A critical mass on house construction is developing, the Tánaiste insisted on Friday, even as homeless figures hit a record high.
Micheál Martin was speaking in Cork as he turned the sod with finance minister Michael McGrath on a €9m investment by the Housing Infrastructure Services Company (HISCo) in the construction of infrastructure to help deliver more than 750 homes on a vast greenfield site in Ballyvolane, 4km from Cork City — one of the largest strategic housing developments (SHD) in the state.
HISCo is a commercial joint venture between the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund and Cork County Council which builds supporting infrastructure on sites where delays have stalled the delivery of residential developments. Its investment is recouped as each house or apartment is sold or first leased.
Mr Martin described it as an innovative approach to overcoming the infrastructural issues that have prevented large-scale house building on sites around the country.
HISCo chairman Jerry Mehigan said the agency is currently working on infrastructural projects that have the potential to deliver more than 2,300 housing units, with thousands more in the pipeline.
Mr Martin said the Government is "disappointed and very concerned" about the latest increase in homeless figures, but said maintaining the eviction ban would have made things worse in the rental market.
"The answer is supply," he said.
"If we were to have an indefinite eviction ban, then more people would have left the market and more people would leave the market.
"What the rental market needs now is a degree of certainty and clarity into the future, and in the forthcoming budget we hope to provide that.
Longview Estates, backed by investors Temporis Capital, secured planning on the Ballyvolane site in May 2020 under the SHD fast-track planning process for 753 houses and apartments.
Contractor Sorensen Civil Engineering has begin delivering the infrastructure on the site to pave the way for the construction of the homes in phases across six neighbourhoods over the coming years.
The residential element includes almost 70 detached four and three-bedroom houses; 278 semi-detached four and three-bedroom houses; 186 four-, three-, and two-bedroom units; 69 three- and two-bedroom duplex units; and 153 apartments including six studio apartments, 42 one-bed, 79 two-bed, and 26 three-bed apartments across three blocks.
