John Cummins (Waterford, Fine Gael)

I gave figures to Deputy Butterly earlier of 8,000 approvals and the 12,000 applications. The quarter 2 outturn figures show 14,000 applications have been made, with 10,000 approvals. There are 156 in Longford, with a good few more applications on hand. This is a very successful scheme. The Cathaoirleach referred to the repair and leasing scheme, which has been used to very good effect in my own county of Waterford, and there should be more uptake in other local authorities. There is no question about that. It should not be the case that over 53% of all repair and leasing units have been delivered in Waterford. It is good for Waterford, as many one- and two-bed properties in city centre and town centre areas have been done, reducing the reliance on emergency accommodation, in particular. I want to see more local authorities delivering in that respect. I think Deputy Ó Broin would agree that I would have raised this when I was a member of this committee. We have the CPO activation programme that was funded under URDF 3. Every local authority got significant funding to go into the CPO space. We want local authorities to be proactive in this space by putting properties on the derelict sites' register and using CPOs where required.

As the Chair knows, I met representatives of his local authority recently to discuss both turning around vacant council properties and the approach that has been taken with the significant upgrades being made to properties. We absolutely need to have good-quality housing for our people. There are minimum required standards in place, but perhaps a better approach might be to ensure that those standards can be met in a shorter timeframe in order that people can get into those properties more quickly. We had a discussion in that regard.