Mr. John McCarthy:

There was mention of vacancy. The figures we have, insofar as they are national figures, are from the 2016 census. There is a headline figure for vacancies. We have done a fair bit of drilling down into that and I can point to the position in my home county of Cork. There are certainly parts of the country where vacancy continues to be a significant matter. We have tried to do a number of things. We have tried to introduce schemes, including those mentioned by the member, to try to bring some of those vacant properties back into use. For example, with the repair and lease scheme we allow up to €40,000 in capital funding to repair a property and it would be leased for a minimum of five years. With the buy and renew scheme we are more flexible. In reality, with a buy and renew property, comparatively less money would be spent because the property would be in such bad nick, with the bulk of the money having to go into a renovation.

A number of local authorities have people on the ground doing surveys in areas where the census suggests there should be vacancy hotspots. Fingal is one and Waterford is another, and the information coming back is that the level of vacancy in the areas that have been examined is massively less than what the census suggested. We should bear in mind that when the census counted vacancies, it included properties for sale and rent that were just turning over in the normal market. We have established a vacancy office in the local government system, which is run from Mayo and is trying to promote among property owners the fact that we have funding available to try to bring vacant properties back into use. We are providing a web facility where vacant properties can be notified to the local authority so they can be investigated to see if they can be added to the housing stock. It is about trying to harness the vacancy potential with the willingness of owners and availability of capital to make all this gel to bring a unit back into use.