John Brassil (Kerry, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to raise this issue, which I have been pursuing for a number of months. It is very topical, given the issues regarding vacant properties, particularly around Dublin. Whereas I would in no way agree with the tactics of occupying properties illegally, it serves to highlight a very important issue, namely, that there are thousands of vacant properties and, to date, no scheme we have tried to address that has worked.

I have often heard the Minister of the day of either housing or health say one can have one's own opinion but one cannot have one's own facts. I will give the Minister of State some facts. In the last census, there were 245,000 vacant properties in the country, 62,000 of which were holiday homes. That leaves 183,000 vacant properties of which 140,000 were stand-alone units and 43,000 were apartments.

This Government has a huge opportunity to deal with the housing and homelessness crisis by utilising the existing stock. One element of that stock is houses vacated by people who are in nursing homes under the fair deal scheme. In figures I obtained from the Health Service Executive, HSE, currently there are 14,000 such properties in the country. Of those 14,000, as few as 600 are being re-let. I call on theGovernment to come up with an incentive to give the owners or the families of the people who own the houses an incentive to get those properties in use quickly. If it set even a minimum target of 10%, 1,300 houses would be in circulation within a six to 12-month period. Surely that is an incentive for the Government to try to deal with the 10,000 people who are homeless.

We talk about incentives. When people are long-term unemployed, we offer employers incentives to take them off the long-term register. If they keep them on for more than two years, they get €10,000 per year, and the person might maintain some of his or her benefits while getting back into full employment. I welcome that; it is a very good initiative. I propose that if we take people off the housing and homeless lists, an incentive would be given to the homeowner to do that. It does work but, to date, every initiative tried by the Government, including its repair and lease and buy and renew schemes, have not worked. I heard the Minister of State at the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government, Deputy English, on a radio programme last Monday morning with Fr. Peter McVerry trying to justify the repair and lease scheme. Fewer than 100 properties have been taken up under that scheme. I am not blaming the Minister of State. It is just that when it is announced we think it will be attractive but it is not attractive and when it is not, the Government should accept it and move on to something new. I am very interested to hear the Minister of State's reply because this is something that is waiting for some initiative and forward thinking to get viable homes back into use, which will make a valuable contribution towards our housing and homeless crisis.

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