Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

They were previously in stock. It is still important they are brought back in. Some are in really bad shape. I will not mention the county, but I was there recently and the homes had been four or five years out of commission. That is the county that was spending €90,000 per home. That is good stock coming back in. I do a report on them separately. They are real homes for real people. Our focus is to deliver new homes and get the vacant stock back into use. On Croí Cónaithe and the vacancy grants, we are looking at an almost 50-50 split between grants given to deal with vacancy and with dereliction. That is obsolete stock coming back in at an affordable rate for lots of people. That is not included in new housing delivery, but we will report on it and it should be taken as that. It has been an incredible success. We have had approximately 5,500 applications so far, with 2,800 approvals.

The other area we look at is repair and lease, where we set targets. That is something Deputy O'Callaghan and others had asked for. There are targets for local authorities for their conversion of commercial premises like empty shops to be brought back into use. They are categorised and brought back in as social housing stock. They were never social housing stock before. That is good. Waterford and Limerick are two counties that do it extremely well.