Jennifer Murnane O'Connor (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I also welcome the witnesses here today. For clarification, I have spoken about staffing and resources in local authorities on several occasions. Local authority staff do good work in spite of being understaffed. In my local authority in the past five years we lost 110 staff who have not been replaced. That is unacceptable. If someone is on holidays there is no one to replace him or her. Most staff in all local authorities are put to the pin of their collar. The position on staffing needs to be clarified.

I believe the local authorities are doing their best. Funding is a big issue but staffing is a bigger one. In respect of derelict sites, a local authority needs to have a timescale for doing up a house. A local authority house is often left for six months because the authority is understaffed. That is unacceptable. A system needs to be put in place to ensure that no local authority house is left vacant for more than six or eight weeks. There is no need for that. Sometimes work is done that does not need to be done. Balance is needed. There is a protocol in place for houses that come back to local authorities. It is not the fault of the staff.

Many of the problems with derelict houses, whether owned by the National Asset Management Agency, NAMA, or the local authority, are health and safety issues. No one today has brought this up. Some houses in private or local authority estates which were bought in the Celtic tiger days and repossessed by the banks have to be boarded up. The local authority has to do this. It is a health and safety issue because young people gather there and people dump rubbish. If NAMA is handing houses to the local authority, the authority needs to consider the big picture. They will house families, which is crucial but they are an eyesore. They draw anti-social behaviour and rubbish because people are not paying for bin collections.

People come to me because their house has been repossessed by the bank and I have to find out who owns it but the witness is right that years ago local authorities had far more powers. We need to give them more powers to do things like that. My local authority held a meeting a few nights ago about St. Patrick's Day. We are trying to make sure the derelict buildings on the main street look good. I believe the local authority is doing its best. Carlow, like Waterford, is part of the repair and lease scheme and there have been concerns about it because 22 people have expressed an interest and eight have qualified. Like everything it has teething problems but I hope the Housing Agency will address this problem and see why those other people did not qualify. The scheme will house people and the houses will go back to the local authorities. I do not know what the uptake in Waterford is but 12 in Carlow did not qualify. The timescale for local authorities to repair houses, their funding and staffing need to be addressed.

The rapid build programme is good for Dublin, Cork and Limerick but it does nothing for rural counties. We would love to have a rapid build programme. The Housing Agency needs to come up with an overall plan because there are many problems. I know the witnesses are doing their best but the simple things they are not addressing are causing the friction. That is where we are falling down.