Ciarán Lynch (Cork South Central, Labour)

The Minister of State's response suggested that there is no clear strategy for dealing with two issues - the number of vacant houses throughout the country and the specific problem of affordable housing. Can the Minister of State tell the House how many vacant private properties there are in the State? I am not sure if he has the figures to hand. I will understand if he does not. It has been suggested that the accurate figure is anything between 50,000 and 300,000. Can the Minister of State give the Chamber any audit figures in response to that?

The difficulty with the affordable homes scheme is that the prices were set at the height of the property bubble. The properties that came on to the market last year had prices that were agreed two years earlier. Does the Minister of State agree that the fundamental difficulty with these properties is their price? If they are to be sold, I suggest that he should consider arranging for the prices to be dropped to reflect the current reality of the market. Everyone in this Chamber understood that the leasing initiative was put in place to acquire private properties for long-term leasing purposes. I will not comment on whether we agree with the politics behind that. If this scheme is to be opened up to affordable housing, so be it. When the scheme was announced, the target of 2,000 properties related to privately owned properties. How many of the properties that have been acquired are privately owned?

See this speech in context