A new €1.25 billion Land Development Agency has been launched by the Government.

The Agency aims to deliver 150,000 new homes over the next 20 years, as part of the next step of Project Ireland 2040.

With an immediate focus on managing State-owned lands to develop new homes and regenerate under-utilised sites, the organisation will also assemble strategic landbanks from a mix of public and private lands, making these available for housing in a controlled manner which brings essential long-term stability to the Irish housing market.

Overall, the LDA will have two main functions;

• Coordinating appropriate State lands for regeneration and development, opening up key sites which are not being used effectively for housing delivery; and

• Driving strategic land assembly, working with both public and private sector land owners to smooth out peaks and troughs of land supply, stabilising land values and delivering increased affordability

The Agency already has an initial pipeline of State land which is capable of delivering 10,000 homes, with 3,000 of those homes on lands which have already been secured.

An Taoiseach Leo Varadker said: "The Land Development Agency, with capital of €1.25 billion behind it, is a step change in the Government's involvement in the housing market. We are going to build new homes and lots of them. That includes social housing, affordable housing, private housing and cost rental housing on both publicly and privately owned land.

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"While the indicators show that the numbers of new houses being built is up by more than a third compared to this time last year and is increasing month on month, we are still facing a huge challenge in meeting demand. We know we are playing catch up after our housing sector was destroyed.

"The Land Development Agency is a Government intervention that is 50 years overdue and which, in time, I believe will be seen to be as significant as the decision to establish the ESB, Aer Lingus or the IDA."

Housing Minister Eoghan Murphy said: "The consensus is that tackling boom-bust cycles of house prices depends on tackling similar cycles in land supply through State driven Active Land Management and this is precisely what the LDA is about.

"The LDA will enable Government to address traditional volatility in land prices as a result of land speculation as well as delays in delivering housing and strategic urban redevelopment generally as a result of delays in delivery due to disparate land ownership and cost allocation for infrastructure.

"Establishing the LDA creates a powerful new driver of urban regeneration with the lands, skillsets and capital needed that will assure housing delivery, including the social, affordable and market housing so badly needed for our citizens."

Minister for Finance and Public Expenditure and Reform, Paschal Donohoe, added: "The LDA will be given access to land that is already in wider State ownership or control for development, and it will have access to capital from the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund and other private finance, which it will raise itself commercially.

"This combination of land and capital for investment will enable the Agency to prepare development plans for these sites and subsequently to fund the development of the sites and construction of housing on a commercial basis. This will enable the Agency to make a significant difference to housing supply in the years ahead, which will have far wider competitiveness benefits.

"Furthermore, the Agency will be able to take a long term strategic approach to land acquisition and management. The longer term effect of its establishment will be to stabilise the supply and development of land for housing and wider development purposes, thus positively disrupting the traditionally upwards pressure on development land prices."

(LM/CM)