Liz McManus (Wicklow, Labour)

That would be helpful. However, I believe the Government needs to take a more structured proactive approach to this. We need to know how many empty dwellings there are in the country. Clearly, we have a surfeit and it would be immensely valuable if we knew the extent of that surfeit. For the Minister of State to simply say that he will try to establish the number of non-returnable forms is to not get the nub of the issue. Is it part and parcel of the project that an assessment is made of the number of dwellings that are unoccupied and that all the resources available are used to track under-occupancy across the country? I do not know whether it is possible under data protection legislation to utilise information held by utility companies. There is a big difference between an enumerator giving up and saying he or she cannot gain access to a particular area such as a gated community and one who, having gone through various procedures, reaches the conclusion that a building is unoccupied.

I suggest that if we do not have this information we will be losing an opportunity to finally understand the extent of the problems that have arisen out of the building boom and where we are now. It would be unfortunate if, following this whole process, a Minister is not in a position to provide this House with the number of unoccupied dwellings and spare capacity in the country and to set out where they are in terms of the regions.

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