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

I thank the Deputy for raising this matter again. It is a serious one and I am familiar with it because the Deputy has raised it a number of times.

To move away from the standard answer on this and give the Deputy the facts as they stand, I have engaged with Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council, as has my Department, to make every effort to ensure that those dwellings in St. Helen’s Court are referred to be secured for social housing. AHBs have engaged directly also on several occasions with the owners’ representatives with a view to buying and acquiring the dwellings at the location for social housing. The problem is that in both instances, through DL-RCC and AHBs, the owner is not willing to sell the units. I have said that I would provide the finance to do so. The council has also engaged with the owner with a view to leasing, even though some people want to cancel leasing tomorrow morning. We have a pipeline of leasing for 3,400 real families who are going to be housed. These are families comprising real people that the Deputy is advocating very strongly for. We have looked at that but again the owner has decided not to proceed.

On foot of this question I will personally engage again with Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council. We are doing as much as we can to try to secure this property but if the owner is not willing to sell, there may be other options that can be looked. I am happy to continue to work with the Deputy on this. Both the Department and I have engaged directly with the council on St. Helen’s Court. I am fully in favour of securing those properties as social housing on a permanent basis, that is, that we buy them, but we need the owner to be willing to engage to sell. Sin í an fhadhb.

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