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

The repair and lease scheme comes under the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government. It was introduced as a way to get private housing stock back into use by making it available for social housing. The initial take-up was not very successful so we reviewed and reformed the scheme to make it easier for landlords to access it. There has been an improvement in the level of take-up since then but many people who approached local authorities about the repair and lease scheme have gone into the buy and renew scheme instead. The local authorities have taken the houses from them, renewed the houses themselves and brought them back in as part of the social housing stock. We have also worked on above-the-shop living. People no longer require planning permission if they want to convert areas above shops into homes. That is specifically targeted at getting life and vibrancy back into towns and villages because that is a very important part of what we are trying to do. Between the urban fund and the rural regeneration fund, there is €3 billion for towns and villages to do precisely the kind of thing the Deputy wants to do, namely, ensure that we do not have a doughnut effect in some of our towns and villages.

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