Dáil debates

Thursday, 19 January 2017

4:05 pm

Photo of Simon CoveneySimon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

No, not at all. I mean that because that is exactly what we are trying to do. Everybody wants more social housing in the system and nobody wants it more than me but we simply cannot build houses overnight. Even rapid-build housing takes time. If we can get vacant properties that are idle at the moment, making no contribution to anybody, back into the system and put long-term leases in place to provide extra social housing in Dublin and other parts of Ireland, that would make a lot of sense. It is also a way of repopulating villages and towns in rural Ireland. It is working in Waterford so there is no reason for not expanding it significantly. Initially, we made €6 million available for 2017 which would cover around 150 properties. We are now looking to ramp that up very significantly and will announce the targets and the spend for 2017 in the next ten days or so. We want to get a faster turnaround to increase the number of social houses more quickly by getting vacant properties that are doing nothing at the moment back into the system.

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