The Government has opened the first call for projects under the new €1 billion Housing Infrastructure Investment Fund (HIIF), Tánaiste Simon Harris TD and the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, James Browne TD, announced.

The multi-annual programme will fund public infrastructure to unlock housing sites across towns and cities over the next five years.

The HIIF is a significant commitment to bringing serviced land to market at scale. Administered by the new Housing Activation Office within the Department of Housing, it is the largest housing infrastructure fund announced in Ireland in many years.

The fund will finance critical enabling works to activate thousands of homes nationwide and forms a central pillar of the Government’s housing strategy, Delivering Homes, Building Communities, which targets the delivery of 300,000 new homes by 2030.

Call 1 is open to local authorities and the Land Development Agency (LDA) and prioritises shovel-ready projects capable of moving at pace.

"This €1 billion fund marks one of the most significant interventions in housing delivery in over a decade. Across the country, we see zoned land lying idle because the critical enabling infrastructure needed to support housing development is not in place.This new €1 Billion Euro Fund will directly tackle this problem. By investing at scale now, we can accelerate home building and deliver the homes needed to meet the ambitious targets of our new Housing Action Plan," the Tánaiste said.

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"We are making our first call out for suitable projects. This Call 1 is deliberately designed to focus on projects that can move quickly and at scale. We want strong, deliverable projects that can hit the ground running and start unblocking housing delivery immediately. The Local Authorities and the LDA have told me that they have shovel-ready options at the ready, today we are asking them to apply for funding for those projects," Minister Browne said.

The Department intends to broaden the approach in early 2026 to include a wider range of delivery models and partners across the public and private sectors.

"While Call 1 is directly targeted at local authorities and the LDA, to get projects moving speedily, I want this fund to utilise all potential that exists. That is why I have written to industry representative groups today to seek the input of their members in relation to key opportunities to unlock barriers in towns and cities nationwide and on how the private sector can play a key role in doing this. No opportunity will go unexplored and I hope to be in a position soon to make a second call for more projects," Minister Browne added.

Applications under Call 1 must be submitted by midday, Friday 27 February 2026. Further information on the HIIF and the Housing Activation Office is available on gov.ie.

The HIIF was announced as part of Delivering Homes, Building Communities 2025–2030 and is a multi-annual fund under the updated National Development Plan (NDP) 2025–2035. It is designed to provide enabling infrastructure to unlock large-scale residential development and will complement investment by other Government Departments and infrastructure agencies, such as Uisce Éireann and ESBN, as part of a coordinated approach to servicing prioritised lands.

Under Call 1, the fund will target advanced, deliverable infrastructure with a housing activation timeframe of 2026–2028. Criteria are expected to evolve over time to reflect national infrastructure needs, sectoral delivery capacity, and policy and legislative changes at national and EU level, building a rolling programme of investment to address barriers to housing delivery.

The Housing Activation Office (HAO) was established to coordinate stakeholders, identify infrastructure blockages, and unlock land for housing—especially in larger towns and cities where homes can be delivered at scale. It brings together senior experts from Uisce Éireann, ESB Networks, the National Transport Authority, Transport Infrastructure Ireland, and the local government sector, and will manage and implement the fund.

A Housing Activation Delivery Group and an Industry Group, convened by Minister Browne on 6 November 2025, meet quarterly to support the HAO's work.