Mr. John O'Connor:

I will deal with the vacant housing strategy first and then the acquisitions. The Minister's intention is to publish the vacant housing strategy in March. A working group is working on it but it is up to the Minister and the Government to decide what initiatives they will take. It is very important to identify the properties. There is the issue of the data and the hard facts. We have been examining the various sources of data, some from the Central Statistics Office, CSO, although it will not give us addresses. We are working on the geodirectory which has the data for the whole country because postmen identify vacant property. We have been talking to the Revenue Commissioners about the local property tax because they have names and addresses which they are prepared to share with the local authority. In the first instance we will provide lists of addresses to each local authority in the country to work on and see how good their data is. Engaging with property owners is critical to finding out why properties are vacant and whether they can be brought back into use. The legal and financial issues that Michael Walsh raised are often major issues for property owners.

As for what might be in the vacant home strategy, the measures outlined by the Peter McVerry Trust are sensible with the exception perhaps of introducing a property tax too soon. Michael Walsh highlighted that. Many property owners are in financial distress or have legal problems. Receivers have been appointed to a vast number of buy to let properties. Introducing a property tax at this stage, without knowing the detail, might not be wise because the people we try to impose it on might not be in a position to pay. All the other measures the trust mentioned were sensible.

It is very important to give the local authorities the resources to deal with vacant homes and that their staff engage with, and talk to, property owners and get properties back into use.

I will ask Ms Dillon to outline what we have learned from our engagement with England, Scotland and Wales.

The fund for acquisitions comes from the Exchequer but it is to be used as working capital. Approved housing bodies will use a payment availability agreement and capital advanced leasing facility, CALF, funding, a combination of current and capital funding. Our fund is a recycled fund.

We started work on this last September and have screened 1,485 properties from various providers. We have seen 690 properties owned by the banks, primarily the Bank of Ireland and AIB.

The information regarding Permanent TSB might not be correct. We have not had a major engagement with it during this initiative. Together, Bank of Ireland and AIB have offered 690 properties and we made bids on 347 of those properties. Sometimes, even when we are making bids, the bank may have appointed receivers or the properties might have already been sold on. That is the kind of scale.

We are looking at properties from other providers and developers. With those we might often decide it would be best for the local authorities or approved housing bodies to engage directly in acquiring properties. We act when it is important to act quickly. In some cases it is better for a local authority or approved housing body to undertake the transaction. In some cases we are just buying in trust for the local authority so the local authority is actually the purchaser. We can provide details of that.

The Senator asked where the properties are. We will provide the committee with a county-by-county list of the numbers of properties. We are happy to provide that detail on our website. There are properties all around the country.