60,000 social housing units to be built by 2025 under Fine Gael plan
Fine Gael’s social housing plan for Government will see 60,000 such homes built at a rate of 12,000 per year for the next five years, the party said at its launch this afternoon.
A total of €11.6 billion has been committed to that end up to 2027, €2.6 billion for 2020, Housing Minister Eoghan Murphy, in his first presence at an official event since the campaign event, said at the event at party HQ in Dublin.
Joined by party colleagues Paschal Donohoe, Damien English, and candidate for Dublin Central Deirdre Duffy, the minister announced that a social housing “passport” would be introduced to enable people to better choose where they wished to live by moving from one local authority to another.
Mr Murphy, echoing one of several party mantras for the campaign, said that the 11,000 homes built last year “is not enough”, hence the commitment to come up with 60,000 such homes by 2025.
“Overall the needs of 27,500 people and families on housing lists will be met in 2020, this builds on the progress already made,” Mr English, the Minister for Housing and Urban Development, said.
Asked why the rates applied to the Rebuilding Ireland Home Loan package had been raised, apparently within the last seven days, from 2% and 2.25% to 2.75% and 3% respectively, Mr Murphy acknowledged that this means that any new applicants will be paying a higher rate than existing customers.
He said this “minimal” change was necessary on guidance from the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform in order to help fund existing mortgage resolution processes.
“The rate is still below 3%,” he said.
Mr Murphy denied that Rebuilding Ireland had been a failure since its inception in 2016, Mr Murphy said that the plan had been to build 50,000 social housing units over a five-year period from that date.
The Minister said that, should Fine Gael be re-elected, it would be his desire to remain on as housing minister. He said that the Government had been reducing its reliance on the private rental sector.
“I’ve been quite clear that we’d make some clear inroads into the problems we have in this country. I think I’ve introduced some important reforms,” Mr Murphy said.
He meanwhile described the severe injuries
