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

Well done to the Senator and her colleagues in the area for supporting it. There are a couple of interesting things about the numbers relating to the Rebuilding Ireland home loan. Some 70% of people who have been successful in getting approval are earning less than €50,000 and effectively eligible for social housing. This is a real support for people who are not taking up social housing but are using this loan to get their own home, which is very important. No one is in limbo here. As I said earlier, we will honour any approval that has been given. When one looks at the number of approvals and the expected conversion to drawdowns, we are at between approximately €180 million and €190 million, so we will reach the limit of drawdowns in six months and that is why we will go for early engagement with the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform about this. No one is in limbo. The scheme has supported more than 500 people to date to drawdown money and buy their homes. The help-to-buy initiative has helped get 10,000 people into homes, which is great. The Rebuilding Ireland home loan can do more and the money is there to do more. As I said, the scheme is not closed and the funding has not run out.

To get a picture of the ratio of approvals to drawdowns, we monitored this and could see when we hit 50% at the end of the first year that the scheme would be more successful than anticipated. We then commenced discussions with the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform and these are ongoing. The Central Bank has to be consulted. That is not my function but a function of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform because it is a mortgage product that occupies an interesting space and is outside part of the Central Bank's macroprudential rules. The Central Bank would need to be aware of any activity like that on the mortgage market. It is a tiny percentage of the mortgage market and a small percentage of the first-time buyer mortgage market. The Central Bank needs to be informed of it, whether there is a change to the policy, which there has not been, or as new funding is approved, an issue that is being discussed with the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform. As I said, the reality is that the scheme requires more money to be made available to it because of the activity involved.

With regard to affordability, we have already had workshops and been in touch with key local authorities to approve the first round for the serviced sites fund, the €43 million that I mentioned. Two or three weeks ago, I announced the regulations coming under the affordable housing legislation in the Dáil. Fianna Fáil's housing spokesperson has been reviewing them. I expect to be able to conclude today following his review and the review of other Deputies who participated in parliamentary questions that day and may come back to me with suggested changes. The local authorities will decide when they open the scheme, which will be based on when they believe homes will become available. The regulations will be clear about what they can and cannot do. The Senator might have missed that, either at the end of March or beginning of April, we will have a second round for the serviced sites fund. We have already received the economic appraisals from the majority of local authorities about the affordability challenges relating to home-building and home-buying.

Each of the 31 local authorities has provided its vacancy report. We have vacancy officers in every local authority now, with funding provided to them. A pilot project was carried out in six local authorities, namely, Cork city, Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown, Limerick, Mayo, Meath and Waterford. They have surveyed more than 7,000 properties and the number of potentially vacant homes identified in that detailed survey, with people going out to look at a property twice in a period, is just over 400. We can drill down into the numbers that were first announced. The numbers were not incorrect but the definition of vacancy was much broader than what we would consider to be a vacant home that could be brought back into use. That speaks to the vacancy rate in those areas being between 5% and 6%. This does not mean that we cannot take action. We are addressing this. I spoke about the thousands of homes that came out of long-term vacancy last year. These properties are not the low-hanging fruit that we thought they were. We have resources in place and we are getting hard data back. More than 2,000 homes have been recorded on vacanthomes.ie, which is run from Mayo, and involves individuals passing a house, thinking it is vacant, and sending a geolocated picture to the Mayo local authority, which then gives it to the relevant local authority elsewhere in the country. Significant work is being done to address vacancy. As I said, we will send the vacancy report for each local authority area to the committee so it can view that in more detail.