Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy is absolutely right to focus on vacant homes and the vacant homes strategy. As we discussed earlier, if we are to solve the problem we are currently facing, it is not just about bringing online new builds but also managing the existing stock that we have. That figure of 180,000 or 190,000 vacant homes in the country does not include holiday homes. People sometimes wonder. Some of the initial work that has been done in terms of trying to drill down into that figure would indicate that maybe about 100,000 or 110,000 of those homes are not in locations where people actually need to live to work and everything else. We might be looking at a figure of about 90,000. When we break that down even further and take out short-term vacancies between letting periods, houses that might have been for sale and homes caught up in probate issues and things like that, the truer figure might be closer to 25,000. It is still a huge number of homes. It is what we need in a given year. We need to make sure that we can come with a very strong strategy to get those homes unlocked and lived in.

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