Mr. Patrick Davitt:

I thank the committee for its invitation, and we are delighted to be here to contribute to its discussions.

IPAV believes that the carbon advantages of utilising existing dwelling houses, including vacant farm homes, are as yet little appreciated, but hold huge potential. The current plan for solving housing demand by focusing on new builds has the added disadvantage of not being aligned with the national target to reduce carbon emissions. It comes at a significant carbon cost. While emissions created within Ireland are largely related to production of cement and aggregates, imported materials such as steel, iron and aluminium are significant drivers of carbon emissions from new builds. Our recent report, Vacant Properties: The Opportunity to Increase Housing Stock and Minimise Carbon Emissions, which members all have copies of and which was compiled by Eamonn Galvin, our sustainability adviser, sets out a series of nine separate recommendations for tackling the issue. These include realistic tax incentives to bring vacant homes back into use and a Government fund with low interest rates for purchasers of derelict or vacant homes until such time as the home reaches a state of repair where the purchaser is able to live in it and is in a position to re-mortgage it by getting a proper property loan. That is something we want to talk about a little more today.

One of the real difficulties is that potential buyers cannot draw down mortgages for these properties because banks and other institutions will not lend for such purposes. We very much welcome the improvements recently announced by the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, to increase the grants available to refurbish vacant and derelict properties, and to extend the scheme to include properties built up to 2007 and also for rent. We have no doubt that these changes will help bring more vacant and derelict houses back into use, but if these measures can be added to, yet more can be achieved. I am calling on the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage to set up a Government-backed bridging fund, administered by and through the local credit union movement nationally, to facilitate bridging loans for purchasers who are unable to mortgage these properties because of a lack of services or the poor condition they are in. Such loans would afford these people the necessary funds to allow them to purchase vacant or derelict homes. When someone purchases a property, avails of the improved Government grants and modernises it, if they can mortgage it through the credit union, they can repay the bridging loan. I am asking the Minister to further amend the Credit Union (Amendment) Bill 2022, which is before the Houses at present, to allow this to happen. We believe measures should include an amnesty period in respect of capital gains tax. If owners are not encouraged and given incentives to sell their vacant homes, they simply will no do so.

If correctly incentivised and informed by the latest research from institutions such UCD, supported by the Irish Green Building Council, which are to the forefront on the issue, we could be really ambitious in increasing badly needed housing stock, and do so in a climate-friendly way that would sustain property values over decades. The research by UCD estimates that a new build results in carbon emissions of 580 kg per square metre compared with a retrofit estimate of just 165 kg per square metre. On average, 65 tonnes of CO2 is emitted when building a new house, compared with 15 to 17 tonnes for a retrofit. That is a huge amount of CO2. We propose that a target should be set for local authorities to bring back 25,000 vacant homes, including those on farmland, each year for the next three years. Achieving this would require the involvement of all stakeholders.

Due to the time constraints, I do not propose to go through all nine of IPAV’s recommendations. However, apart from the tax incentives and targets mentioned already, they include the setting up of a task force involving relevant stakeholders to bring together a workable set of policy measures and the appointment of at least one full-time vacant property officer in each local authority, who would be responsible for knowing the status of vacant properties and lead plans to bring them back into use. As our report points out, the utilisation of vacant houses is desirable socially and in terms of meeting climate change targets, and it is imminently achievable with the right set of policies. According to the most recent geometric report, there are almost 100,000 vacant houses. According to the census, there are 166,000 houses that are vacant. That is not to mention derelict houses or other types of houses, such as over-the-shop accommodation, that we see throughout the whole country, which nearly equates to 10% of our total stock of 2.25 million properties. It is a huge amount of buildings. If tackled properly, many of them could be brought back into use. I thank the members for listening.