Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I broadly welcome the incentive. It is a positive measure which I hope will encourage people to carry out refurbishment and so forth. It may complement the pay-as-you-save installation programme about which there has been much discussion. It could link in very well with that scheme and is a much better-conceived incentive than others that will be discussed later. Sadly, I missed the discussion of a scheme provided for in section 2, which is misconceived as its beneficiaries could include people and large companies who are doing very well for themselves, rather than small builders, householders and so forth. The JobsPlus scheme and similar schemes are highly problematic. This, however, is a good thing.

The job of the sub-committee is to scrutinise and consider legislation. Deputy Doherty raised a valid point. He described cases in which adaptations are required to houses that have not been occupied previously with a view to assisting a disabled person. Another category of works also arises. As the Minister is aware, the census found that there are 320,000 empty houses in the State. Many of these will have lain empty for a long period before being purchased, whether from the National Asset Management Agency or someone else. It is possible, therefore, that they will have deteriorated in various ways.

The time lag could mean that somebody who seeks to purchase a house that was not previously occupied would be required to make adaptations to the house in order to make it habitable and, indeed, attractive. Might the requirement that the house have been previously occupied be a problem in this context? I take the Minister's point that we do not want to let the builder off the hook in terms of doing proper work but I can also think of circumstances in which an individual thinking of buying one of the many empty houses around the country may want to have work done on it to bring it up to standard given that it may have been sitting empty for a number of years.