Emer Higgins (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will begin by taking up where Deputy Gould left off on vacancy and what has been done about it up to now. I suggest that people familiarise themselves with the National Vacant Housing Reuse Strategy 2018-2021, which was published in 2018. In May 2020, its report pointed to 420 vacant properties being purchased from financial institutions by local authorities, 62 purchased for sale, 161 homes being delivered through repair and lease and 545 homes being delivered through build and repair. Of course, these statistics are, thankfully, out of date and we now know that more than 1,000 homes have been delivered through repair and lease and build and repair alone and what we want to see is more of that. That is why we are championing the need for local authorities to be given targets so that they deliver more homes through these mechanisms. That is what we are asking for cross-party support on.

To come in here and say that there is no strategy, nobody is working on this, there is no budget and nothing is being done is a bit disingenuous. Admittedly, more needs to be done and that is why Senator Cummins and I have been advocating for targets to be set in this field. We ran out of time during my previous contribution but I would love to hear Ms Graham give a commitment to come back to the committee on whether targets relating to vacancy, repair and lease and build and repair can be set. That question is a bit of a rollover from my previous slot. I would also like to ask a rollover question of Mr. Hogan on the top three nuggets or tips he got from Flanders or the studies of Amsterdam that he thinks we can lift and shift to Ireland.

I have an additional question that may not come under Mr. O'Sullivan's remit but I am sure he has some expertise in it. I would love somebody to talk us through the vacant homes website, vacanthomes.ie. What happens when someone reports a site, how does the process work and how many of those sites have been transformed into homes?