A new Housing Activation Office has been established to identify barriers and actions required to speed up delivery of vital public infrastructure projects needed to enable greater housing development in Ireland.

The Office, within the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, will act to ensure a radical step change in housing supply and will sit alongside existing divisional structures in the Department.

Explaining the importance of the new office, Minister James Browne TD emphasised: "The housing crisis needs rapid responses from all angles and unblocking delivery via a targeted team of experts is one of the first things I identified to be done coming into office less than three months ago.

"We must accelerate housing delivery to meet the needs of families and communities, and to deliver on ambitious targets. The Housing Activation Office will do what it says on the tin - it will have the ability to seek out obstacles to growth, the agility to troubleshoot and ensure smoother delivery. In a nutshell it’s a dedicated, expert team focused on activating sites and getting shovels moving where they are stalled.

-- Advertisement --

"This new team, led by an experienced CEO – will engage, align and in a very practical way pull together stakeholders, including our local authorities, utility and infrastructure providers, and industry to get infrastructure delays moving in a coordinated way and enable an unblocking of housing development."

The Housing Activation Office will focus on infrastructure needed at a local level to support housing delivery on multiple sites, including the social and community infrastructure needed to support the development of sustainable communities. It will identify and deliver those actions needed to accelerate the delivery of necessary public infrastructure and will have an operational function to unblock issues on the ground.

The Office will work with those Departments and agencies who are engaged in infrastructure development and who will remain responsible for the timely and effective delivery of their infrastructure priorities.

The Housing Activation Office will include experts seconded directly from key public infrastructure agencies with detailed knowledge of the relevant infrastructural areas, including Uisce Éireann, ESB Networks, the National Transport Authority and the Local Government Sector.