knowledge 14 November 2025 |

The Government’s Housing Action Plan to 2030: Top take-aways for the private sector

Delivering Homes, Building Communities 2025-2030: An Action Plan on Housing Supply and Targeting Homelessness (the Plan) here has been unveiled. The Government’s much-anticipated housing plan to 2030 aims for the delivery of at least 300,000 homes, including 72,000 social homes and 90,000 supported starter homes during the 5-year period.

It acknowledges required investment of €20 billion per year, with the Government providing €9 billion (through the Exchequer, the Land Development Agency (LDA) and the Housing Finance Agency (HFA)) and the balance coming from private sources. In the Plan’s own words, this means that “Delivering Homes, Building Communities presents a renewed environment for private sector investment and development to deliver more homes.”

The actions in the Plan are very familiar. Most are a renewal of commitments made by the Government in the Programme for Government 2025 and many of them have already been set in train. Focussed on delivery of housing at pace and at scale, we have picked out the key incentives and enablers aimed at the private sector to achieve that, as well as some to watch out for.

Tax measures for viability

• Reduced VAT on apartments: VAT cut from 13.5% to 9% to lower delivery costs and unlock apartment schemes.
• Enhanced corporation tax deduction: New deduction worth up to €6,250 per apartment for construction and conversions to apartments. 
• Corporation tax exemption for cost rental income: Exemption for rental profits from new cost rental homes (designated on/after 8 October 2025), improving project viability and returns. 

The less welcome tax measures will all be familiar or have been announced as part of Budget 2026. These include a commitment to enforcing the residential zoned land tax regime to discourage land-hoarding. To address vacancy and dereliction there is also continued commitment to the vacant property tax and a proposal to reform the derelict sites levy to become a new derelict property tax.

Viability support schemes

• Croí Cónaithe (Cities) Scheme: Funding of up to €144,000 per apartment to bridge viability gaps for owner-occupier apartment delivery, with widened eligibility and smaller minimum scheme sizes. 
• STAR (Secure Tenancy Affordable Rental) equity funding: Up to €200,000 per unit capital support for cost rental apartments, now structured as equity to improve take-up and financing. 
• Living City Initiative enhancements: Extended to 2030, broadened to pre‑1975 residential properties and additional cities, with tax reliefs (including accelerated allowances for commercial conversions) to incentivise urban renovation and “over‑the‑shop” homes. 

Rental sector reforms

• Confirmation of the proposals for rental sector reform announced on 10 June 2025: These include a new ability for market rent resets and CPI-linked rent caps for new-build apartments and student-specific accommodation (both aimed to give predictable revenue growth and encourage investment), as well as a re-framed security of tenure model for the protection of tenants. The legislation to give effect to these proposals is still awaited. For more on these proposals, see our briefing here.

Increased access to equity / funding

• ISIF equity programme: New €400 million equity-risk capital programme (following completion of the first €400 million), partnering with banks to make private equity more available for developers (especially SMEs). 
• Home Building Finance Ireland capacity: Additional €200 million and agile loan products to fund viable schemes nationwide, supporting developers (especially SMEs) where banks are constrained. 
• Housing Finance Agency scale-up: Increased borrowing capacity to finance social, affordable and student homes, supporting pipeline confidence and counterparties. This action has been taken with the HFA borrowing capacity now increased from €12bn to €13.5bn.

Planning and judicial review

• Renewed commitment to resourcing the system and to implementing the reforms in the 2024 Planning Act: In particular, a specific action has been identified for the Department of Climate, Energy and the Environment to produce a scale of recoverable costs that will limit the amount paid to those who bring successful legal challenges under the 2024 Act. The timetable for commencement of the 2024 Act remains unchanged: the Plan does not identify when precisely the balance of the 2024 Act will be in force. There is no mention of the Civil Justice Reform proposals mooted by the Minister for Justice, Home Affairs and Migration last month. Some of those suggested reforms may be overtaken by the soon expected report of the Accelerating Infrastructure Taskforce. A specific action has been identified to prioritise the work of that taskforce, which can safely be presumed to mean implement the recommendations that will soon be made.
• UDZs: The Plan highlights the potential for Urban Development Zones to deliver significant housing development, particularly close to transport infrastructure. Development zones have been used before, with great success at Adamstown, Cherrywood, the Docklands and Poolbeg. The hope is that UDZ will deliver the same at greater pace. This could work where elected local councillors support the required planning framework and development plan variation. It should make it easier for statutory undertakers to prioritise investment, servicing lands with high potential.
• Development levies & review site infrastructure funding: When previous proposals for land value sharing or zoning value sharing were not mentioned in the Programme for Government or the Government’s legislation programme, it seemed the prospect for new levies to transfer value from private property owners to the State had been abandoned. Discussion in the Plan about how infrastructure for site development is funded appears to reawaken that risk. Either way, this is something to watch out for.

Infrastructure: unblocking barriers to development

• Equipping the Housing Activation Office and a €1 billion Infrastructure Investment Fund: This is to unblock site-specific infrastructure constraints (water, energy, transport), reducing delivery risk for private schemes. 
• Transport, water and grid investment: Multi‑year, large‑scale commitments (e.g., €12.2bn water, €3.5bn grid, major transport programmes) to make more land “shovel ready”, supporting private delivery at scale. 
• Private sector to develop water services infrastructure: The private sector will play an important part in developing water services infrastructure in conjunction with the provision of new housing. This is in line with the Government announcement on 4 November 2025 that developers will be able to develop new wastewater treatment facilities in collaboration with Uisce Éireann for smaller housing developments of up to 40 homes.

Design: new standards and methods

• Reformed apartment and planning standards: Updated apartment design standards and compact settlement guidance to reduce per-unit costs. The legal challenge to the revised apartment standards is listed for hearing by the Planning Court in December, and an early outcome is expected. Those awaiting the outcome before progressing with modifications or fresh applications should not have much longer to wait.
• Standardised design and MMC adoption: State-led standardisation and promotion of modern methods of construction (MMC) to reduce costs and programme durations, creating predictable, scalable delivery models for private partners. 

Procurement

• Material reset of public sector procurement for housing delivery: A new national procurement strategy will consolidate policy direction for the next 5–10 years, with stated goals of simpler, more transparent competitions, greater SME participation, and alignment with Better Public Services 2030. Local authorities are being steered towards regional consultant and contractor frameworks to accelerate throughput and secure price certainty. Those frameworks are already being applied to “accelerated delivery” pipelines and are intended to support larger, repeatable schemes, standard house types, and MMC-compatible delivery.
• Design and Build (D&B) preferred delivery model: D & B is the preferred delivery model with reported time savings of 9–18 months compared with traditional routes, driven by early contractor appointment, standardised employer’s requirements, and reduced change control.
• Single stage approval process for projects of up to €200m: The Plan also introduces a single stage approval process (for projects of up to €200m) and mandates the Design Manual for Quality Housing and the Employer’s Requirements for Detail Design of Quality Housing, embedding standardisation and enabling D&B at scale.

The net effect is a policy preference for D&B through frameworks, with MMC and standardised design at the core of procurement and contract strategy.

LDA: expanded remit

• Partnering opportunities with LDA: The leading role taken by the State in housing delivery under Housing for All will be expanded under the charge of the LDA in partnership with local authorities and approved housing bodies. The Government has committed additional equity funding of €2.5bn to the LDA, giving it a total of €8.75bn capital. The LDA will also look to source external finance to support its objectives.  The requirement for private sector capital to implement the aims of the Plan generally sees an emphasis in this Plan on the “public and private sector partners working effectively together.” One aspect of this will be continued involvement by the LDA with private developers to activate and deliver stalled, planning approved housing development on private lands (Project Tosaigh).

There is a lot more in the Plan of interest including:

• CPOs: proposals for increased use of compulsory purchase orders among other measures for tackling vacancy and dereliction
• AHB sector supports: a commitment to supporting the approved housing body sector to organise so that it can deliver at scale. That fact that local authorities will also be required to ensure there are enough sites zoned to facilitate the housing delivery targets set out in the Plan is not new but also.

The Plan is ambitious and 2030 is coming fast. The length of the Plan and the many strands it brings together is an indication of the complexity and scale of the challenge and the collaborative effort required on the part of all stakeholders to achieve its aims. Stakeholders will be keen to track the review process in the Plan to see what measures prove to have the greater impacts on unlocking delivery.