Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Yes. We have identified all of the land. We have identified the thousands of hectares and the 42,000 homes that we think that land can deliver. What each local authority is doing is coming up with a strategic plan for each of its landbanks. Separate to that, we also have a piece of work on the targets that we want each local authority to deliver in order that I can have confidence that as we look at the figures, not just for 2018 but into 2019, 2020, 2021 and beyond, we can actually get this done. It is important that people can have confidence in delivery. Where there have been difficulties with rapid build and with other areas in the past year, we have learned from the experience of fixing these difficulties and from the changes that have been made as a result. We can have greater confidence in our numbers.

There were some additional questions, although I may have addressed them already. Let me be clear about the vacancy numbers. The Central Statistics Office came out with the figure of 198,000 homes. Included in that were vacant homes in areas where there was no demand for housing. The figure also includes homes between lettings, homes that were being sold, and a number of homes caught up in probate. We did a desktop exercise in the Department at the time which showed that there might potentially be 90,000 homes in high-demand areas that needed to be looked at. The geodata numbers came out at around that time and they indicated something similar. We started to drill down into this and thought that we might perhaps be dealing with 25,000 vacant units in high-demand areas throughout the country that could be brought back into use quickly. There is no point in targeting a vacant home that cannot be brought into use quickly because the probate issue is so complicated, for example, or because of a matter that is making its way through the courts. We did further work with the local authority chief executives over the summer and I met the Dublin chief executives individually in their offices to examine this and to examine the numbers in question. Having done this, it looks like the number will be lower than 25,000. In fact, I think it will be lower than 20,000. It is still something to pursue and it is absolutely still a stream of housing that we can bring online. We need a proper understanding, however, of where these vacant homes are and how we can release them. That work is ongoing and is nearing completion. Dublin City Council has the end of October as a deadline for getting solid figures on vacancies back to us, while the deadline for the rest of the country is December. We will have those numbers.

We also need to make sure we can take advantage of over-the-shop living. Dublin City Council estimates that approximately 4,000 homes could be delivered in this way. The committee members will know that from walking around the city themselves. It is also true of towns and villages. Over recent months I have been at a number of different locations where one could see vacant shops on the village street. There is no reason they could not become homes. Again, our long-term objective in the national development plan is to revitalise and regenerate town and village centres. This means building and living in these centres. Taken out onto a wider scale in the cities, one can look at examples like the Charlemont Court development that we opened earlier this week in my own constituency. This is a city centre project making use of infill sites as well as redeveloping an old social housing scheme into a new social and affordable scheme. It is mixed use with private and commercial space as well as leisure facilities and everything else. That is where we want to concentrate our development as a principle. That is very important.