It has been announced that £23m will be made available for the construction of affordable homes and road repairs in Northern Ireland.

Finance Minister Sammy Wilson announced the extra £10m in funding for affordable homes to the Department for Social Development (DSD) and £13.1m to the Department for Regional Development (DRD) for road repairs.

The announcement was part of the October monitoring round, in which departments account for their spending.

A body, which represents road builders and other quarrying-related firms, has welcomed the reallocation of cash towards construction projects.

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The Quarry Products Association Northern Ireland (QPANI) said the funding would help keep jobs and give some hope to the beleaguered construction industry.

This comes at a time when figures revealed construction output in Northern Ireland has continued to fall in the largest quarterly decrease in production since 2008.

According to recent figures published by the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA) the total volume of construction output in the second quarter of 2011 fell by 7.0% compared to the first quarter of 2011. This is 14.4% lower than the figures released for the same quarter last year and the largest quarterly decrease in the volume of construction output since quarter 3 in 2008.

Meanwhile the data published in the Northern Ireland Construction Bulletin showed that the volume of overall construction output in Northern Ireland has now fallen for 12 consecutive quarters and is 38.2% lower than the peak in 2007.

Downturn in production has been attributed to the decrease in the volume of new work, which decreased by 10.8% over the quarter.

The volume of new work has now fallen for six consecutive quarters and is 47.1% lower than the peak in Q1 2007.

(LB)