Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour)

-----energy efficiency in voids, and it is specifically targeted at empty houses both last year and this year. I visited various local authorities around the country who asked me if they could use some of that money for occupied houses because tenants living beside empty houses can see the work being done on those yet cannot get their house done because they are in occupation. We are talking about relatively scarce resources and trying to distribute them as widely as we can.

I accept that the issue of voids is important as well as the need to ensure that we target funding to bring those houses, apartments etc. back into productive use as quickly as we can. On the other hand, there are also occupied houses that are in a bad state also. We have to spread the money and target it as well as we can.

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