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

-----we use Louth County Council as an exemplar when we look at what we are trying to do in housing provision in other parts of the country. It had an important role to play at the housing summit in September, at which it discussed the things it had done successfully such as the issuing of compulsory purchase orders. Vacanthomes.ieis a website which is managed by Mayo County Council and it has been very successful in that people have been able to publicly identify a vacancy.

That allows us to determine whether properties are actually vacant.

In July we requested every local authority to appoint empty home units. We have established one in the Department to work with them. We gave local authorities in cities and large urban areas a target of reverting to us with more detailed data for their vacancy numbers by the end of October and every other local authority a target of providing the data by the end of the year. On the back of that data we will be able to target vacant homes to try to bring them back into use.

There has been a debate on the actual number of vacant homes. Different data sets and figures have been produced. Various local authorities have begun to drill down into and examine them. For example, when we inspected units Fingal County Council and Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council had been told were vacant, they turned out to be businesses. One needs to get on site. After a unit has been identified as vacant, one needs to find out why it is vacant. That work is ongoing.

We hope the new repair and lease scheme will help to bring some vacant units back onto the market. An additional incentive was included in the budget by the Minister for Finance where work was needed to bring vacant homes back into use in the private market rather than as social housing. The incentive provides for allowable expenses of €5,000, the bridging part, to take advantage of the home improvement scheme. In that way, someone could spend quite a bit of money and get it back by way of a tax return. These are the various measures we are taking to help on the vacant units side.