Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Crowe. There is a committed and dedicated housing team in Clare County Council. I intend to visit in July to look at some of the schemes myself. I look forward to meeting the Deputy there. We need to increase new stock. We have outlined that and will be ambitious. We also need to look at existing stock. Clare County Council, through the work of its housing director, chief executive, and teams on the ground, was successful last year and brought 77 vacant homes back into use with funding of €1.5 million that I provided. Those are 77 homes that were not in use and are now back in use. This year, Clare County Council is targeting 119 vacant homes to bring back into use for people on the social housing list, with funding of €1.7 million which the Government provided for Clare. We need to and will build more homes but we need to better use the existing stock. In less than two years, we will have brought back nearly 200 vacant homes in Clare for the use of our citizens and that is good.

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