Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

There are 5,000 vacant houses in County Meath. One in nine commercial properties in my county is still vacant ten years after the crash. In towns such as Navan and Ashbourne the level of commercial vacancy is as high as one in seven properties. The current level of house vacancy in the State is twice what it should be in a normal housing market. Towns such as Clonmellon, Delvin, Athboy and Oldcastle have been literally gutted by vacancy. As Deputy Ellis mentioned, there are a number of reasons for these vacancies. My view is that speculators are sitting on vacant, derelict houses waiting for prices to go up before they put them back on the market. According to the census, there are more vacant houses in County Meath than there are people on the housing waiting list. It is an incredible figure.

A constituent contacted me recently to say that in the main street in Enfield, 50 people could be housed in the boarded-up houses.

Last year I tabled several parliamentary questions and found out that there were 570 vacant State-owned buildings throughout the country. The State heats, looks after and pays for the security of these buildings but refuses to permit people to live in them or to use them as a resource. Many of them are in commuter towns that are resource hungry. That this would exist in a housing crisis is shocking. That the Government cannot link a resource with a humanitarian need is an example of its sheer and utter uselessness. That such vacancy sits side by side with such need shows the inept, rudderless spatial planning that exists in this State. The outcome of this State inaction is massive. There are 8,000 people homeless and 100,000 on the waiting list and the vibrancy of town centres across the country is greatly diminished. Boarded-up houses and shops are blighting communities. Anti-social behaviour in these vacant houses is rife.

There is a series of streets in my town, Navan, which is completely derelict. Every now and then one of the houses there is set on fire which imposes a massive cost on the fire service and also threatens human life. The Government plans to resolve this issue have been paltry. The repair and lease scheme, which aimed to bring vacant and damaged properties back into circulation around the country, has had very little take up. In County Meath at the end of summer only two properties had availed of this scheme. Meath County Council, which began setting up a vacant sites register since the start of the year, had registered no sites by summer. We support this Bill and wish it luck in its passage through the Dáil. We urge the Minister to get serious, not to think of all the reasons it cannot happen but to come up with solutions for it to happen.

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