Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats)
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I thank the officials from Mayo and Longford county councils for attending. I will ask Longford County Council about vacancy rates in local authority-owned dwellings and, in particular, the findings of the National Oversight and Audit Commission, NOAC, Local Authority Performance Indicator Report 2021. The report showed that the highest level of vacancy, percentage-wise, for local authority dwellings in the country was Longford County Council, at 7.19%. That is a very high vacancy rate. Looking at some of the other vacancy rates, Monaghan, which is not terribly far away from Longford, had a much lower vacancy rate of 0.84%. The report also showed that Longford County Council had the second highest re-let times in the country, at 67 weeks. In most local authorities, the times are less than a year. In Monaghan, for example, it is 13.6 weeks. Why is this the case? Why does Longford have such high levels of vacancy. I presume it is not due to a lack of demand for social housing. Why does the council have such long turnaround and pre-let times? What is it doing about this? Has it made any progress on this in recent years? Has it set itself targets on its vacancy rates and pre-let turnaround times and to get its vacancy rate down?