Seán Canney (Galway East, Independent) | Oireachtas source

While the housing crisis seems to have caught the imagination of everybody in a very short time, it has been with us but has been hidden behind Covid-19 for the past year.

There is a huge emphasis on new houses, but we have a challenge and a potential within that challenge, in that we have over 2,000 vacant properties in this country. The Society of Chartered Surveyors Ireland has stated that 75% of the space above ground floor retail in Dublin is empty. There are reasons all of that is happening. When we are looking at policies or ways to get houses built and young people and first-time buyers housed, there is potential to do things quickly.

As I have said previously, the help to buy scheme should be expanded to include first-time buyers of vacant properties in order that they can bring them back into use as homes, especially in our towns and villages. If we do that, there will be a threefold benefit. First, first-time buyers will have a home at an affordable price. Second, we will rejuvenate our towns and villages by bringing these houses back into use. Third, we will reduce our CO2 emissions because we will have the foundations in, the walls built and the roofs on the houses. We need to spend the money on retrofitting these houses and assist in that regard. We have a deep retrofit scheme and we should encourage first-time buyers to use it for these properties.

If we are serious, we have options other than creating policies and a land development agency which will develop sites and so on. The reality is the cost of building new houses is way beyond the reach of most people, whether it is couples or single people trying to get a mortgage. It is not the fault of developers or anyone, but we are now building houses to a standard that is increasing the cost.

We need to look at this issue in a rational way. How else can we do this? There is no town or village in this country that does not have vacant properties. We need to incentivise first-time buyers to get involved in taking over these properties, creating homes, regenerating towns and, at the same time, helping the Minister to solve this problem and doing it quickly.

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