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

The Deputy must bear in mind that we are talking about private property. If we are going to approach this we must do so in a way that is going to work. I have already begun consultations with the Attorney General and the Minister for Finance as to different measures that we can undertake.

The publication of the strategy may be delayed for certain reasons of which the Deputy is aware. That does not delay the commencement of work. When I meet with the local authority chiefs next week, we will talk about the work that is already under way. For example, we can look particular counties like Louth, which has been very successful in pursuing compulsory purchase orders, CPOs, and using that tool to get houses unlocked. Of the houses that were unlocked in Louth, they only needed to use CPOs for a tiny fraction. It was the initial engagement with the owners of the property that allowed them to come to much quicker and cheaper solutions than would have resulted from going through the whole CPO process.

Work on this is already under way in the local authorities. The piece I have to do is to look at the different schemes that are in place to see how they have been working, whether they have been working, if we can streamline them in some way, and if we can bring more resources into those schemes. We need to make sure that the local authorities have the people to do that work on the ground in co-ordination with the unit of my own Department. I may be able to give more detail on that at the beginning of next week.

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