Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The issue of student accommodation is separate from this conversation. It is a very different issue. I am happy to discuss it with Deputy O'Sullivan because a lot of progress has been made on student accommodation. Some 6,000 new units have been built, 6,000 are currently being built and 7,000 are planned. Great progress has been made. It is probably unfair to students to generalise by saying this is not positive for a neighbourhood. A lot of work has been done with neighbourhoods and communities to ensure the new accommodation fits in. There are quite good reports on that. I accept that there were fears before the accommodation was built but those fears have been addressed. Again, student accommodation and the voids programme are separate issues. In essence, student accommodation is a form of accommodation which was needed and can be built quite quickly. That is why we have adapted the planing process to allow it to go through planning quickly. They are new builds on new sites, more often greenfield than brownfield sites.

The voids programme, planned maintenance and the timelines involved are different issues. Naturally, as a Department, we would like to have a standard timeline throughout the country and we want to achieve standards regarding the works completed on empty houses. Local authorities take different approaches. We have been working with the local authorities association to implement a standardised approach. There has been considerable engagement with the Department on this over recent months and much progress has been made. Timelines will be outlined, as will guidelines on the level of work to be carried out on houses.

We also want to move towards planned maintenance. At the moment, maintenance takes place in an unplanned and responsive way in most cases. When a house becomes vacant a local authority can go in and do all the work. Very often, this is an expensive job and it takes time. We want to address that. We need a planned maintenance regime and we signalled that in 2018. That is what we are working towards. That will help us with a faster turnaround. More than 1,700 voids were brought back into the system last year. A large amount of money has been spent on this area in the past three or four years.

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