Fergus O'Dowd (Louth, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the newly appointed Ministers and agree with what they said. Things are very much better than they were and people on the streets in our towns and cities feel that life is getting better and more people are working. This statement is an indication of what we are going to do into the future. As other speakers have said, it is not perfect but it is good news for lots of people. I would like to see greater progress on some of the issues referred to. I welcome the investment in housing, in particular, and I would like to see further investment in our capacity to deliver more houses and accommodation in a more efficient way.

I have consistently raised the issue of the number of empty homes around the country. In Dublin city there are 31,000 empty homes, in Louth there are at least 4,000 and every county has a long list.

The percentage of empty homes is higher in Ireland than it is in the United Kingdom, which is a telling figure in itself. We need to look at what is best practice in some of these countries. In Bolton, England, there is an empty homes officer. I believe Bolton has a population of approximately 200,000 people and in six months in the past year, the authorities there managed to provide 523 new occupied homes in the city that were previously empty. There is an empty homes tax in the United Kingdom which local authorities have the discretion to apply and most do. I believe we ought to tax homes which have been empty for a significant period and which are not principal private residences and get them back into the marketplace. I believe there are sufficient and adequate incentives for landlords to do up these homes but I would not have a problem with the Government wanting to increase some of those. We need to look at the run-down and derelict areas in our cities and towns. Perhaps we need to look at changing the living cities initiative to make it more attractive for developers to go into run-down areas and areas which were formerly centres of employment. We have many empty millhouses in my home town, as well as derelict areas near the docks and so on. We should find an imaginative new way of making these habitable and occupied as quickly as possible. This is how we can reach the targets that are clearly identified in the housing strategy. In the past year or so, Louth County Council has taken abandoned homes, that is, homes which are closed up, derelict and abandoned and in which no one lives and brought 50 of them into commission. There are families living in them now and the reason they are living there is the council was able to slap a compulsory purchase order on buildings when it was not able to identify the owners. The council was able to do this in a short period and at a very low cost. The legal cost for the CPO in most cases was less than €1,000, and in the vast majority of cases it is unchallenged. This brings into occupation houses which were empty and an eyesore and a source of vandalism in their communities.

One of the points made by other Deputies was that we should have a social statement, that is, a statement on social policy, inequality and poverty and I agree with this principle. We ought to have quarterly statements on these matters in order that we be able to challenge and interrogate the progress of the Ministers and the Departments in this regard. Some Opposition Members have said this Government does not care but this is wrong. It certainly does, and what the Minister, Deputy Donohoe, has done with the former Taoiseach, Deputy Enda Kenny, is to invest in areas where there is a high prevalence of unemployment and drug abuse and a significant amount of crime. These are the areas we need to tackle and prioritise. We must build an equal society and while I would support such a debate, I point out the Government is and will remain absolutely committed to that social agenda.

The last point I wish to make concerns questions raised about the public sector and its capacity to do business. We should open up the public sector to short-term contracts and have many more people move into local government and the health services for a short time - two or three years or whatever - bringing skills and expertise into those bodies which they do not have at present. In addition, people in the public sector should be encouraged to take career breaks, go into industry and business and bring new skills and new management ideas into what can often be a hidebound and bureaucratic life for too many people.

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