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

I welcome the fact that the Minister is meeting with the local authorities next week and hope that he will impress upon them the importance of proactively finding out why there are so many vacant properties around the country. I referred before and will refer again to the Peter McVerry Trust's specific proposal about having vacant homes officers in each local authority, whose role would be to try to bring those homes back into use. Even if the figure of 200,000 or so that is identified in the census is an overestimation, it would still be enough to address the housing and homelessness crisis if even a fraction of them were brought back into use.

I know the Minister might not tell me as it is a budgetary matter, but is he going to consider a vacant homes tax? Will that be discussed and considered in advance of the budget? What measures will he take to ensure that local authorities are more proactive in this area? There is so much potential and it is so much quicker to do up an empty house and bring it back into use than to build a new one. It seems to me that there is no great sense of urgency being shown in respect of the fact that these houses are there and could be brought back into use.

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