merrion street

The Government has  launched the Land Development Agency to build 150,000 new homes over the next 20 years, the next step of Project Ireland 2040.

The new Agency has an immediate focus on managing the State’s own lands to develop new homes, and regenerate under-utilised sites. In the longer-term it will 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.

An Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar said the LDA will come to be seen to be as significant as the decision to establish the ESB, Aer Lingus or the IDA.

Housing Minister Eoghan Murphy signs the new agency into law today by Statutory Instrument, with a chief and management team already in place. It 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. The Agency is already in the process of expanding its portfolio.

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.

An Taoiseach 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.

Minister for Housing Planning and Local Government Eoghan Murphy said:

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.

View the press release in full here.