Bank of Ireland (BOI) has announced it will increase its funding for housing development to €2.5 billion by 2026. 

The Bank’s current available funding for housing development is €1.75 billion, but increased the fund today “to support the construction of 25,000 units”. 

BOI also announced it would increase funding for social housing from €400 million to one billion. 

CEO Gavin Kelly said the “greatest challenge facing Irish society today is housing”. 

“The simple fact is that we need more,” he said. “Our ambition is to play an even bigger role in meeting this challenge by investing more of our capital to drive more supply. 

“While there’s a serious mismatch between supply and demand, we also need greater diversity in housing to support the evolving needs of our population.  

“That’s why we are also aiming to more than double our finance for social and affordable homes, because we believe that everyone should have access to high quality housing.” 

BOI reported it is currently funding the development of roughly 21,000 housing developments across 170 sites, of which 3,200 are housing social. 

Recent projects include 250 apartments in Palmerstown, Dublin 20, for McGrath Group Properties and a mix of social and private market rentals in Kilternan for B&C Contractors Group.