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

The programme for Government says "We will end the use of unsuitable long-term emergency accommodation, such as hotels and B&Bs, for homeless families". What we heard about here this morning goes much further than people ending up in hotels and bed and breakfast accommodation, with 12 families and 30 children being sent to Garda stations. I want to follow up on the vacant homes strategy. Will the Tánaiste or the Minister, Deputy Coveney, give us a date when the strategy will be published? The question was not answered when my party leader raised it today. The Peter McVerry Trust has looked at the situation in Britain where every local authority has a vacant homes officer. The Tánaiste said we do not know why they are vacant but that person's job is to go out and look at vacant homes, find out why they are vacant and bring them back into use. It has been really successful so there are models we can use to get a quick win. There are almost 200,000 empty homes in our country while people are sleeping in parks.

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