Almost €6 million for Social Housing in Wicklow

Posted March 21st, 2012 in Wicklow County Council

Wicklow County Council receives €5,689,000 housing capital allocation

Fine Gael Wicklow TD, Simon Harris, has welcomed the allocation of nearly €6 million to Wicklow County Council for the provision and improvement of social housing units.

Deputy Harris said, “There has been a considerable rise in the demand for social housing units across Wicklow in the last few years. The need for social housing is still growing and the Government has been forced to come up with new ways of ensuring the continued provision and maintenance of social housing. The announcement of this funding will come as a great relief to the many people on the waiting list for social housing in Wicklow and around the country.”

“The allocations announced by the Minister for Housing and Planning, Jan O’Sullivan TD, will support investment under the national regeneration programme, works to improve the standard and energy efficiency of the national social housing stock as well as meeting existing commitments for delivering social and voluntary housing.”

“Part of this will include the provision of housing under the new Capital Advance Leasing Facility, which will see approved voluntary housing bodies who raise finance privately to acquire or build new units provided with an up-front equity stake of 30% of the property value. These bodies will then be able to use leasing payments to repay loans in respect of their equity share.”

“The Minister has also confirmed a multi-annual capital investment programme for new housing construction projects will be outlined later in this year, and I look forward to the details of this scheme being made public.”