Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

As the Tánaiste is well aware, we are in the grip of the worst housing crisis in the history of the State. Despite report after report, promise after promise, and Minister after Minister with responsibility for housing, the emergency remains and families throughout the country continue to suffer in an awful way.

Yesterday, the Taoiseach referred to the problem of supply and the importance of addressing that element of the problem. The specific issue I want to raise with the Tánaiste is the apparent paralysis that exists when it comes to addressing an existing supply, namely, vacant dwellings, which all of us here know are located throughout the country.

In my county of Tipperary, the total number of vacant dwellings in 2011 was 4,817 out of a total housing stock of 38,390. That was 12.5% of the total stock, a figure which must be alarming. The latest indicators from the Central Statistics Office, CSO, reveal that out of a total housing stock of 38,937, the vacancy rate has only gone down to 11.9%, which is minuscule. It is less than a 1% drop in more than five years which, as the Tánaiste is aware, have seen the crisis reach epidemic proportions. If we continue at that rate it will be 2073 before the vacancy rate in Tipperary drops to less than 1%.

That demonstrates that no Government policy has worked to any effective degree in terms of putting vacant dwellings back into the housing market. The working group chaired by the Housing Agency has undertaken preparatory work on the vacant homes strategy. The output of the working group was presented to the Department in June 2017 and is being further developed with a view to publishing a report in the near future. Yet another report, yet another delay.

Two weeks ago, the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, acknowledged that the repair and leasing scheme and the buy and renew scheme developed to assist local authorities or approved housing bodies to address the problem of vacant dwellings was an absolute failure.

He informed us that at the end of 2017, a total of 820 applications had been received under the scheme but only nine homes had been delivered and tenanted. The Tánaiste was also the Minister with responsibility for housing. If we cannot even manage to get vacant and habitable dwellings up to scratch and back into the market, what real hope do we have of addressing the massive supply deficit of new builds? In my own county of Tipperary only 11 houses were built between 2011 and 2016, despite the fact that we had over 3,000 approved applicants and 10,000 on waiting lists. Why on earth should anyone have any faith in the Government's pledges and promises to tackle the crisis? Is it not time to accept that on this issue the Government is ideologically blind and simply unwilling to take the kind of action required?

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