Mr. John McCarthy:

I will try to take the questions in order. The vacant homes strategy is at a very advanced stage and is being led by the working group led by the Housing Agency. Even though it is at an advanced stage, if Deputy Ó Broin wishes to make a submission over the next week or ten days, we would be more than happy to receive it. We can arrange for the relevant contact point to be passed to the Deputy. In respect of timing, we would hope to have it finalised around Easter. There is one slight imponderable. There is a more detailed report from the CSO on the housing piece arising from Census 2016. That will come to us in the first half of April so we just want to proof the final version of the strategy against that. Broadly speaking, we are talking about the second half of April.

There are two elements to the Housing Agency acquisitions. In overall terms, there is a €70 million fund available but it is designed to be a revolving fund. After the units are initially purchased by the Housing Agency, they are sold onwards to approved housing bodies. The most up-to-date picture from the Housing Agency is that it has signed contracts on 238 units. Sales on 82 of those units are closed. Bids have been submitted on a further 98 units. The Housing Agency is looking at further properties all of the time. The important thing is that as well as moving ahead with those purchases, the Housing Agency is moving ahead with the onwards sales to approved housing bodies. At this point in time, it has earmarked 151 of the units for which it has signed contracts for onward transfer to two approved housing bodies so it has already identified the onward purchasers for nearly half of what it has got in the system. The critical part is that it gets money back into the system, which will allow the Housing Agency to get on with further purchases. The Housing Agency is moving ahead on both tracks in parallel.