Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 14 December 2021

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government

Urban Regeneration: Discussion

Mr. Richard Shakespeare:

In fairness, we are all about trying to do what is right. We will quite happily work with Mr. Grimes and his team in Waterford. It can be difficult, though, to take a one-size-fits-all approach to these things. The Deputy talked about sharing best practice. We are in a constant learning environment. None of us has the monopoly on the right way of doing anything, to be fair. On the Deputy's question on the vacant homes officer, we do have a full-time officer. On the initial figure 213 and the three vacant homes, it was a small sample size. It was just to give us an indicative approach to it. I think we are probably better off waiting for some of the census data and the local property tax returns, which we can layer over our data. I fully agree with Ms Murphy in terms of the layering over of data. It brings us to different levels of understanding the problem. Hopefully, that has answered the Deputy's questions.