The Land Development Agency (LDA) is seeking expressions of interest from landowners to allow it to purchase sites on which it can build affordable housing.
The agency was set up in 2018 to deliver affordable housing on State-owned land.
It is seeking to increase its original budget of €1.25bn, which includes a provision to borrow another €1.25bn.
"We’re in discussions with government on that at the moment," its CEO John Coleman told told RTÉ's News at One.
Under Project Tosaigh it can purchase and complete stalled or unviable housing projects in partnership with developers, and then makes the homes available through affordable purchase or cost rental schemes.
A total of 2,750 homes have been contracted or commercially agreed as part of Project Tosaigh.
To date, no homes have been completed on public land by the agency, which aims to deliver 5,000 such units by 2028.
"The LDA delivers in two primary ways, one of which is on public land by direct development", Mr Coleman said.
"We're working on about 12 sites that can deliver about 5,500 homes, some of which are in construction."
"The other way that we’re delivering is through partnerships with housebuilders where we’re seeking to deliver at least 5,000 additional homes so 10,000 in total over the next few years," he said.
The agency also has the option of buying privately owned land to deliver affordable housing, and is now seeking expressions of interest from landowners in this regard.
The LDA "realised that there were quite a large number of sites where there wasn't an experienced housebuilder in ownership of the site", Mr Coleman said.
It therefore "decided to launch a process to see is there a capacity and an ability to acquire additional sites that are out there, with planning consent, that we can deliver directly ourselves."
The agency will consider all submissions received from landowners, but is immediately focused on large-scale sites that could be used for higher density homes in Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Galway and Waterford.
Sites with existing planning permission for at least 200 homes, particularly those close to or near existing State-owned lands, are of particular interest.
The LDA will assess the sites referred to it according to criteria such as transport links, development viability and building cost efficiencies.
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Interested parties can find the expressions of interest information and submission documents on the LDA website.
The LDA currently has planning permission for more than 3,5000 homes on State-owned lands.
