Ms Deirdre Cullen:

The CSO first started looking at this data on foot of the 2002 census, which of course was taken during the building boom in Ireland. At that time, I was looking at housing estates going up around our office building in Swords and wondering what was their status. We went through the enumerator record books back then to compile data on vacant dwellings. We handed that data to organisations like the ESRI for particular analysis. We first published those statistics in 2006. There is a series on vacant dwellings in Ireland that goes back to 1991. It shows that as long ago as 1991, some 10% of dwellings were vacant. The committee can see the analysis we have done on vacant dwellings this time around. Even though it was a no-change census, we felt we needed to add value to the data. On that basis, we decided to capture information on dwelling types which we did not have the last time. We can now see data on detached dwellings in rural areas. Tomorrow, the committee will get data on detached dwellings in small areas. That will help us to inform policy makers on these matters. In 1991, some 10% of dwellings were vacant. That figure reached a maximum of 15% in 2006. Now it has fallen back to approximately 12.5%. While the London figures are interesting, I surmise that they come from administrative data because UK censuses are held every ten years.