Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I hope to meet the new city manager and the director of service for housing in the near future to address these issues. To add to what I said, we have also submitted a €100 million proposal under the Structural and Investment Funds to the European Union for deep retrofitting of 2,000 apartments and flats, and 1,500 of those are in Dublin city. We are fairly confident that we fulfil the requirements for the Structural Fund money, and we hope we will get information on that in the very near future. That is another measure we are taking.

There are a variety of ways in which we want to bring the units which are there back into use, which was the subject in the Deputy's Topical Issue. I am also very conscious of the need to increase supply in whatever way we can. In Dublin, in particular, there is a real issue around housing supply, both private and public, and there are real pressures in the private and public rented sectors, which we recognise. I have made a strong commitment to working as hard as we possibly can to maintain our budgets for homelessness, despite the pressures in the current times. These are all priorities and, as the Deputy requested, we will address them with the Dublin City Council manager and other colleagues on Dublin City Council.

See this speech in context