Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I will respond to the general issue first. Senator Reilly is right to be concerned that local authority houses are allocated as quickly as possible after they become vacant.

With regard to Senator Mooney's request, I will get the figures for him. There is a significant number and there are big variations among local authorities. Some local authorities leave houses idle for more than a year and do not allocate them but others do the work more rapidly while some authorities have a lot more empty vacant houses than others. As Senator Moloney has said, I have allocated funding from the stimulus package. The first stimulus package allocated €15 million for this purpose under which over 900 empty vacant and boarded up houses will be refurbished. The second €15 million will refurbish over 1,000 houses and the final figure depends on how much work needs to be done. There are some valid reasons that local authority houses are empty, such as a fire or because significant work needs to be done and the local authority has found it difficult to find the funding. Some authorities are very good and work very fast while others leave houses vacant for very long periods for no good reason that I can see.

About a month ago I had a meeting with the directors of services responsible for housing in all of the local authorities. I made it clear to them that I want good practice to be mirrored in all of the local authorities so that they stop leaving houses vacant for long periods. I wish to also mention an issue that happens, particularly in the Dublin area, which was raised with me. I refer to cases where a perfectly good kitchen has been thrown out and replaced by a totally new one. All of those areas are being examined and best practice is what we are trying to achieve. I have told the authorities that if encouragement and giving money for voids does not work then the stick will be the next approach. There is evidence of improvement and I will publish statistics again soon. I will forward the number of vacant houses in the local authorities to the Senator.