Minister for Housing Simon Coveney has announced plans to fast-track the delivery of 30,000 new homes in major urban centres in Dublin, Cork and other urban locations around the country.

The Minister made the announcement at the launch of Pillar 3 – Building More Homes – under the Government's "Rebuilding Ireland – an Action Plan for Housing and Homelessness."

Speaking at the event in Dublin, the Minister said: "Today we are setting out how, with housing providers, we intend to kick-start badly needed additional supply.

"A key element is the identification of Major Urban Housing Development Sites with the potential to deliver up to 30,000 additional homes, in great locations on existing zoned lands and close to the key areas of demand over the next 3-4 years with even more potential for another 30,000 homes on those lands or a total of 60,000 homes in the long term.

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"The initiatives being announced today are part of a drive to upscale the pace of delivery in the places that people need homes most. These sites are in some cases already serviced by major infrastructure but often need additional investment and co-ordination to get them started.

"Therefore I have placed the Housing Delivery Office within my Department at the disposal of the relevant local authorities and development interests to trouble-shoot as needed on these and other sites, a process that is already underway as today's event will hear."

Mr Coveney added: "If we are to achieve two of the core objectives of the Action Plan – increasing supply to a minimum of 25,000 homes per annum and providing the 47,000 social homes committed to, we must speed up the processes that lead to housing delivery and we must make it more efficient to deliver the homes that people need and where they need them.

"For my part, I have made a number of changes to the planning system to speed up the processes and reduce building costs, with more coming under fast track planning legislation published this week and I have made funding available under Local Infrastructure Housing Activation Fund (€200m) and in Rebuilding Ireland I have set out a series of actions to ensure the restoration of a functioning housing supply system.

"Today is a very good start by identifying the sites with the greatest potential for development and both I and the Government now want to see developers getting on with building the homes that people need."

(MH/JP)