Social Housing for Quilty and Shannon

Nearly €5m is to be spent on developing 25 new social housing units in Clare, as part of a new nationwide investment programme.

Ten homes are being built in Quilty, along with 15 more at Tullyglass in Shannon at a combined cost of €4.75 million.

The money forms part of a newly-announced investment programme worth €312 million that seeks to build 1700 new homes throughout Ireland.

Minister for the Environment, Community & Local Government, Alan Kelly said the first major direct build social housing programme is part of the first phase of  the Government’s social housing strategy. €312 million has been approved which will see an additional 1,700 social housing units come on stream by 2017 with an estimated 3,000 additional jobs in construction created.

The projects, which cut across each local authority area, range in size from small numbers of units to projects of over 50 units for some of the Dublin local authorities.

Minister Kelly said local authorities submitted applications for direct building programmes with approval granted to over 100 projects in just two months. “Further assessments will be carried out throughout the rest of the year with some projects requiring planning approval. All will be completed by 2017,” he said.