THIRTY-EIGHT NEW social housing units are to be delivered by the Peter McVerry Trust charity to the Limerick suburbs of Moyross and Southill.

The national housing and homeless charity is delivering the project in partnership with Limerick County Council and City Council and it is funded by the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage under Rebuilding Ireland.

Of the new homes, 22 will be two-bedroom houses and 16 are to be three-bedroom. The homes will be factory-built and assembled on-site.

“The homes will be high quality and energy efficient for the householder,” according to Aoife Duke, Director of Housing Development at Limerick City and County Council. “[T]he homes will fill out certain sites thereby knitting together existing housing in both areas.”

As the components of the house will be built off-site, there will be minimal disruption to the existing communities.

The programme of works will commence this month and is aimed to be completed by December 2021, according to Pat Doyle, CEO of the Peter McVerry Trust.

“As part of our ongoing supports and management of these new homes, all the new tenants will receive ongoing supports from our local Housing with Supports team based in our Limerick office,” Doyle also said. “All the people housed in these new homes will be coming from the local authority housing list and become tenants of Peter McVerry Trust.”

The construction of these houses is to form part of a wide regeneration and development of the Moyross and Southill areas by Limerick City Council and County Council. Michael Collins, Mayor of the city and county of Limerick, said that the on-site project will give the lift the community needs as the country emerges from lockdown and moves “to accelerate our economic recovery.”

“This is a very positive project across our Regeneration areas and will not only bring with it much-needed homes but also training and job opportunities for people in Limerick,” he also said.

Chief Executive of Limerick City and County Council, Dr Pat Daly said this project is “is a real win-win for all concerned.”

“The key innovation here comes from the fact that the delivery of housing is being directly linked with the creation of employment opportunities in Limerick.”

In March of this year, there were nearly 62,000 households reliant on the government for social housing. However, those households do not include others currently living in local authority rented accommodation or those receiving the Housing Assistance Payment (HAP) or Rental Accommodation Scheme (RAS) supports.

In Budget 2021, €3.3 billion was made available for housing delivery programmes. Minister for Housing Darragh O’Brien said that this investment will aim to deliver 12,750 new social homes, which would be the largest social housing programme delivery in the history of the state.

He said previously that the government aims to build 50,000 houses in the next five years. The Department of Housing also confirmed earlier this year that 7,827 new social homes were delivered in 2020.