Rebecca Moynihan (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I will start by prefacing it because we often look at this issue a bit backwards. It is about enticing people to reuse a property. For example, in Amsterdam people are required to register a property and if it has fallen into vacancy, not necessarily dereliction, people are encouraged to bring it back into use. We need to begin to look at it that way.

In the middle of a housing crisis, we also have large build-to-rent properties being left empty, which is an absolute scandal. That does not strictly fall under dereliction or going through a CPO process but, as Deputy Cian O'Callaghan said, there needs to be the stick of a vacant site tax for something that can be reasonably used for housing. We need to do everything we can to reasonably bring it back into use for housing. Based on my experience on Dublin City Council, I know of many houses where we do not necessarily know who the owners are. It might be somebody who is either not living within the jurisdiction or in the local area and it is very difficult to get them to bring the property back into use.

With that in mind, I want to address the issue of funding so that local authorities can do the work we expect of them. Sometimes we criticise local authorities too much for not bringing properties back into use. We are inclined to think that everything is the local authorities' responsibility while at the same time not giving them the funding and powers to allow them to do that.

I ask Mr. Clegg about the status of a property in Dolphin's Barn that Dublin City Council sold to a developer in 2017 because it did not have the ability to bring it back into use. The developer then sat on it, did not bring it back into use and did not fulfil the terms of the agreement. The same applied with the Iveagh Markets, which fell into dereliction after the property was disposed of and not brought back into use.

I want an explanation on Chapelizod. It is a whole village. I am delighted to see that Dublin City Council is moving to place CPOs on the sites in question. Those buildings have been sitting there and through the derelict sites register the owner or developer has put pretty pictures in the windows. It is still a village where there could be tens if not hundreds of homes that have been left vacant. I ask Mr. Clegg to outline the status of the CPOs he mentioned in Chapelizod village.

The Plough Pub is another problem. Dublin City Council bought that property with a view to getting a developer to build it and then leasing it back from the developer. That again comes down to funding for local authorities. Dublin City Council simply does not have the funding to be able to bring that back into use.

Does Ms Murphy know of any international comparators besides Scotland which have good data sets that not only identify dereliction but also vacancy? Do Ms Murphy and Ms Sherry believe there is a place for "meanwhile use" within vacancy and dereliction?

I hope I did not go on too long.