Ms Caroline Curley:

In any given year, there is a turnover of houses and casual vacancies. There are probably approximately 120 in Limerick and while the council makes revenue budgetary provision for that, and we also avail of Government funding, for which we are very grateful, there was a shortfall for 2022. We tried to deliver on our voids programme but we had a number of long-term vacant properties that needed serious money spent on them, in addition to the energy retrofit programmes. I again acknowledge the fact that there is Government funding for this but when we do the energy retrofit programme, we also do planned maintenance in the house. The estimated cost of the various programmes for 2022 was more than €21 million; in fact, it was nearly €22 million. There was a funding deficit of €7.71 million. A loan was being repaid for Troy Studios and the council agreed to repurpose that loan and give it to the housing department to allow us to tackle the voids and long-term vacants, along with Departmental funding, in order that we could produce an extra 178 homes for people within the next 12 months. It will go into 2023. It is a good news story. We are very grateful to the council for making that decision.