Aindrias Moynihan (Cork North West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I will focus on vacant housing and getting those houses which are built into circulation as quickly as possible. In the 2016 census the CSO identified that 12.3% of houses were vacant nationally, but in Cork the percentage was 13.2%. That amounts to 22,000 housing units throughout the county which are vacant. They are vacant for a host of reasons. Perhaps they are for sale, to rent or are under repair. Those situations are more acceptable, but there are also houses vacant because banks are sitting on them or because developers are just not able to finish them. There are also many houses which need a little bit of repair to get them into circulation.

The repair and lease scheme, which was aimed at bringing some of those vacant houses into circulation, had only delivered 48 houses throughout the country at the end of last year. People had expressed an interest in the scheme but only one in ten of them was able to create a tenancy from it. It was clearly too restrictive and not operating properly. The Minister needs to take a serious look at it, make it more widely available and bring more of those vacant homes into circulation for people.

The Minister should also look at water infrastructure that is blocking housing. Unfinished estates or villages exist where people have sites and money but cannot build houses because there is no sewer connection available to them. In the meantime they are forced to occupy rental properties. Coachford is the classic example of this. The people there are waiting for a sewer, and there is an unfinished estate sitting idle, waiting to be finished. People cannot build there. The Minister has to co-ordinate with Irish Water to get such schemes progressed as quickly as possible. There are apartment blocks standing vacant, such as that over the shopping centre in Macroom. People want to let them out. Every effort should be made to release any blockages so that those units can be made available for rent.

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